My return to Neowin...and a bold experiment!

[ScottKin]

Hello, all!

It's been a long time since I've posted here, and it's nice to return to a site / forum that I used to frequent quite often. Usually, I would just join-in on the current trending topic I was interested in, and try to provide assistance and guidance to users who needed technical help with their system in the Windows forums.

However, today the tables have turned and it's I that am in need of some guidance and technical assistance.

For 4 years, I've had two systems in my office/studio/lab that have used the same motherboard: MSI's NF750-G55. They've been excellent systems and I've had no problems with them - until a power supply failed and put a virtual coffin-nail in my main system's motherboard. Since both machines used the same motherboard, it was a trivial task of swapping motherboards and I was up and running fairly quickly. However, it soon became apparent to me that I needed my 2nd system up and functional. I found a decent deal for what I believe will be an excellent motherboard for my main system: MSI's 970 Gaming. I currently have an AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black as the CPU and 8GB of Patriot G-Series DDR3 1600mHz RAM on the NF750, and a modest eVGA GTS 450 for video.

 

The experiment is this: Swapping motherboards without re-installing Win7 Ultimate and ALL of my software!

 

I have so many programs installed on this existing platform (226, taking up ~58GB) that it would take days and days of re-installs, explaining to other tech support people why I need a new installation / authentication key for their software, etc. So, this is what I'd like to try and see what the community feels would work.

Step 1: Backup & System Image to USB HD - Done
Step 2: Hardware Swap: NF750-G55 to 970 Gaming
Step 3: Boot into Win7 Safe Mode
Step 4: Install all drivers from included disc
Step 5: Boot into Win7 normal

What would be the probability of this being a successful hardware swap? I've got so much going on here, with running an Internet Radio Station / Streaming Music Service that I really need to have as minimal downtime as possible. Is there any chance that this might work?

 

In the process of doing some more research I've come across an interesting piece of software called "Paragon P2P Adjust OS" - this appears to be a Windows PE 3.0 package which allows you to pull-out device driver dependencies, linkages, Hive entries and driver files and rolls the Windows environment (Non-PE) back to base-level drivers as if you had just installed Windows. It would be nice, of course, if the first process worked, but this also is an option.

Suggestions / comments are most welcome, especially if you've had any experiences (good or bad) with Paragon P2P Adjust OS or any experience in a similar situation.

 

Thanks - and it's nice to be back!

 

--ScottKin

[sc302 Veteran]

You can create an image and use baremetal restore to inject the drivers that would cause your system to bluescreen during this process.  You will probably have to purchase because I don't know of a free one that supports bare metal. (not really that bold, I do this quite often with dell to hp to lenovo to build your own/white box)

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

welcome back.

 

is the motherboard the only piece of hardware that's getting replaced?

 

What's definitely going to happen is Windows 7 is going to freak out about the "new" hardware. After it calms down, it'll install new drivers and you'll have to reboot once or twice. After that you should be good. you might be forced to reactivate windows, though.

[ScottKin]

Thanks, Jason S. & sc302!

 

sc302: From what I've read, Paragon P2P Adjust OS will be doing, basically, what Baremetal Restore would be doing, except it's performing the work on the *live* Windows install and not the System Image I've already done on to an External Drive.

 

Jason S.: No other Hardware changes or additions. Re-activating Windows should be trivial.

 

--ScottKin

 

P.S. Jason S. - how do I get my member tag back? It's supposed to be sitting at https://www.neowin.net/signatures/37965.png, but it's not there.

[zhangm Supervisor]

P.S. Jason S. - how do I get my member tag back? It's supposed to be sitting at https://www.neowin.net/signatures/37965.png, but it's not there.

 

Remove the .png extension.

[LaP]

You can create an image and use baremetal restore to inject the drivers that would cause your system to bluescreen during this process.  You will probably have to purchase because I don't know of a free one that supports bare metal. (not really that bold, I do this quite often with dell to hp to lenovo to build your own/white box)

 

I think AOMEI Backupper support it in the free version now but i'm not sure.

[ScottKin]

Jason S.: Yeah, I've been around Windows long enough (member of the NT 3.1 DevTeam) to know what to expect - I'm just trying to minimize it.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

You should be able to do this for free with Sysprep, i'd clone the hard drive first before trying this, just to be safe.

Open a Command Prompt with Administrator rights and type: cd \windows\system32\sysprep

 

Now you are working in the sysprep directory type: sysprep /generalize /OOBE /shutdown

 

Your windows install will now be generalised, then shutdown. It's important you then don't boot the windows install again on your current hardware, otherwise you will have to do the above again.

 

Now you can place the hard drive in your repaired system.

 

Power the system on and Windows should boot with generic drivers like you had just done a clean install, however all your installed apps will be there. You can then install your drivers as you would do after a clean install and re-activate Windows.

 

Edit - I think when doing this your user profile is removed, so might not be a good solution unfortunately.

[ScottKin]

You should be able to do this for free with Sysprep, i'd clone the hard drive first before trying this, just to be safe.

Open a Command Prompt with Administrator rights and type: cd \windows\system32\sysprep

 

Now you are working in the sysprep directory type: sysprep /generalize /OOBE /shutdown

 

Your windows install will now be generalised, then shutdown. It's important you then don't boot the windows install again on your current hardware, otherwise you will have to do the above again.

 

Now you can place the hard drive in your repaired system.

 

Power the system on and Windows should boot with generic drivers like you had just done a clean install, however all your installed apps will be there. You can then install your drivers as you would do after a clean install and re-activate Windows.

 

Edit - I think when doing this your user profile is removed, so might not be a good solution unfortunately.

 

Sysprep will only work if your current Windows install was a "Clean" install and not an Upgrade to get to the OOBE state. This system was originally upgraded from Vista Ultimate, if my memory serves me correctly. Also, your existing profile *is* retained, but you won't have access to it until you do your final reboot - you'll need to make a temporary account during the Sysprep process, but once it's complete, you should be able to select your previous User Account from the Login screen and have your permissions, ACLs, User Settings & Personalization as it was before.

[+devHead Subscriber²]

I tell you what, Scott, I did this (with Windows 8.1, mind you) and it freaked me out when my PC booted up to Windows and installed the new hardware.  And I changed the motherboard (Asus to Gigabyte), RAM (DDR2 to DDR3) and CPU (AMD Black to Intel i5).  I was imagining that I would turn the PC on, and boot directly to the jumpdrive that had my new OS installation on, but it just booted into Windows.  It took a couple of minutes to install some new drivers, but then it was up.  I was blown away!  

 

I think it should work for you with Windows 7.  And welcome back!

[PGHammer]

Thanks - this will solve a similar (though not as extreme) issue I have staring me in the face.

I'm finally able to get the hardware upgrade I had stalled on for years off the ground.

It's only motherboard and CPU (and Intel to Intel), however, the motherboard does have some differences from the one it replaces - different RAM type (DDR3 replacing DDR2), different LAN drivers (Intel i217V vs. RealTek 8111E) and a different chipset (Z97 replacing G41).

 

The three OSes (10079 Pro, 10079 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2016) will need to be SysPrepped and shut down - all three are clean-installed.  (I have the replacement drivers in a partition on one of the drives, waiting for installation.  To be safe, I'll also copy the extracted replacement drivers to a USB stick.)  Does the ORDER the OSes are SysPrepped matter?

[ScottKin]

Thanks for the warm "welcome home", +dH - it's been waaaaay too long.

 

I'm almost ready to do this transplant - wish me luck!

 

--ScottKin

[ScottKin]

Thanks - this will solve a similar (though not as extreme) issue I have staring me in the face.

I'm finally able to get the hardware upgrade I had stalled on for years off the ground.

It's only motherboard and CPU (and Intel to Intel), however, the motherboard does have some differences from the one it replaces - different RAM type (DDR3 replacing DDR2), different LAN drivers (Intel i217V vs. RealTek 8111E) and a different chipset (Z97 replacing G41).

 

The three OSes (10079 Pro, 10079 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2016) will need to be SysPrepped and shut down - all three are clean-installed.  (I have the replacement drivers in a partition on one of the drives, waiting for installation.  To be safe, I'll also copy the extracted replacement drivers to a USB stick.)  Does the ORDER the OSes are SysPrepped matter?

I take it that the three builds are in separate partitions as well? If they are, then the order of SysPrepp-ing shouldn't matter, as long as you aren't sharing any components across the partitions. I'm still slightly confused as to what you're trying to do with that collection of builds and how things are layed out.

 

If they're on separate partitions, it won't matter which order.

[Inertia]

I use Acronis True Image with universal restore for this job.

Its not exactly free, but its easy enough to get hold of, it works well and is easy to use. Ut assists you injecting crucial drivers, such as data or raid which are needed in the first boot.

[Steven P. Administrators]

Oooh welcome back, it's now two days later, what happened?

[WinOutreach2]

I

[fusi0n]

welcome back.. was hoping for Hum though

[ScottKin]

welcome back.. was hoping for Hum though

 

LOL!...no comment on that...hehe

[ScottKin]

Oooh welcome back, it's now two days later, what happened?

 

Thanks, Steve - nice to be back!

 

So, I'm happy to report that all is well here at the studio / lab / office!

 

Paragon P2P Adjust OS performed as advertised. It took a few reboots to get all of the new hardware recognized to their base hardware levels, one last reboot after installing all of the specific drivers from the MSI disc, and everything was golden. This was all done through the "Automatic" option for Paragon, so I did not try the more specific process of removing old platform drivers and injecting the new ones into the system & hive.

 

I'm loving this new (for me at least) motherboard. Very stable, plenty of options, USB 3.0, Killer 1GB NIC, dedicated USB ports for "Gaming" keyboard & mouse (low noise, gold-plated contacts). The only limitations is that I can only do 2-way SLI...but both PCI-E slots run at x16 in 2-way SLI!!

[+devHead Subscriber²]

 

I'm loving this new (for me at least) motherboard. Very stable, plenty of options, USB 3.0, Killer 1GB NIC, dedicated USB ports for "Gaming" keyboard & mouse (low noise, gold-plated contacts). The only limitations is that I can only do 2-way SLI...but both PCI-E slots run at x16 in 2-way SLI!!

I've got a Killer NIC on my new Gigabyte gamer board too - it's a sweet puppy. Your system sounds like a really nice setup, Scott.  Glad it went good!