Can i change motherboard & cpu without re.installing windows?


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  On 15/02/2013 at 11:23, Torolol said:

but some installed program might be DRM tied with CPU & Motherboard serial numbers (such as Office 2013), so ...

Good point but I have office, (a crazy expensive suite I had to buy additionally) didn't have a problem with it with the new hardware....
  On 15/02/2013 at 11:27, Optimash Prime said:

trial and error then :p

Mostly...

I can only speak for myself, maybe I just got lucky, (who knows) but all I had was a restart in safe mode, let windows start, restart, it went to windows update, did some other stuff, and I'm still using it. (although it's time to upgrade again for me)

done it many times on vista, 7, server 2008, 2008 R2 and few times on 8 and server 2012, it works.

better then spending few weeks reinstalling apps.

basically what I do is, before chaning the board I uninstall all drivers, especially for video, storage controllers, motherboard, what I can't uninstall in add/remove programs I uninstall though device manager.

shut down, switch the board/cpu and reboot.

I have done it before. it will be hit or miss if it works...if windows could find all the drivers to make it run but before you do anything somehow backup the hard drive before you try! Just in case windows says nope! ain't going to happen! and crashes. :woot: btw are you changing board and cpu with the same thing? If so no probs but ottherwise good luck

I wouldn't really recommend it to be honest. Whilst Windows can reconfigure itself for new hardware profiles, I have tended to find it still leaves the OS somewhat crash prone and unstable, even if you uninstall all your drivers first.

In the xp days that would cause a blue screen. I have not changed a system completely with a windows 7 install, so I can't say for certain. I can tell you that by running sysprep it will take all of the hardware settings out and require you to re-enter your key, which will cause a reactivation. Running sysprep will not require you to reinstall windows entirely (this is how to properly image windows onto another computer with all of your software and settings in tact)

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