Motherboard Being Replaced

  • Thread starter Thread starter Casanova Fly
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Casanova Fly

Alright. I'm running Vista Ultimate 64-bit on a eVGA nForce 780i motherboard.
I'm about to upgrade to an eVGA nForce 790i motherboard. I've got an
authentic version of Windows, obviously, got the disc and everything. WHAT do
I need to do to make this successful WITHOUT having to do a full reinstall?
I've read a lot of stuff about disabling and uninstalling drivers and chipset
drivers and controllers and stuff, only having so many peripherals plugged in
on startup, etc. Is there anyone out there with any advice on how to
successfully switch motherboards WITHOUT the full reinstall.
 
Since you are staying with EVGA Mobos that use the same BIOS you may not
have to do anything.
I did not have to anything when I switched from an Intel MOBO running 32 bit
Vista HP to a Gigabyte board. If booted and registered itself right away
with out a problem.
 
I plan on updating the BIOS on the 790i, and I'm not sure if the 780i and
790i would run the same BIOS being different boards. I don't predict much of
a problem (technology wise; I have terrible luck though, so I'll probably end
up totally screwed). They're relatively the same board though, so I don't see
it being a problem, but I want to be safe and eliminate any possible chance
of failure.
 
You should not have a problem bringing the system back up on the new mobo.
There is only one ACPI x64-based PC driver for all Vista x64. The system
may immediately want to install some new drivers for things like the NIC if
that changes, but the system itself should not be a problem. But stuff
happens, so be prepared.

Back up your system, of course, just in case.
 
The BIOS will be different for the 790i in order to leverage its
capabilities better. Don't worry about the BIOS. That is more a hardware
matter.
 
Sorry, I should have said the same brand of BIOS and did no mean to imply an
exactly same BIOS content.
 
I've got 3 hard drive's running right. All the system files and most program
files are loaded on my C drive, which is a Western Digital 150GB Raptor
drive. I assume only this will need backed up, since the other two are just
basically storage drives. And will I be able to back up my settings and
stuff? I've customized my Windows to my liking and that took quite a while,
so would that end up backed up as well?
 
That would be my approach in your situation.

Remember the Windows Easy Transfer tool? Use it to save your settings and
then use it again to restore them later. WET is at
Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools or simpy type "migwiz" in
Start/Search. Select 'this is my old computer' and the appropriate place to
save the file. Then restore by running again and selecting 'this is my new
computer' (or whatever the exact wording is).
 
Alright, I've got the backup thing down and underway.

What do you recommend in terms of hardware? Should I uninstall all the
drivers and stuff that I can find and disable whatever I can in the Device
Manager?
 
Heavens no. Vista will ignore drivers that aren't needed (some of your old
devices) and request drivers for the new devices if Vista doesn't already
have them in the driver store and you will see some balloons about it come
and go.

As long as you are backed up just swap your mobos and take it from there.
 
Well that's comforting. I've been reading around, hustling the various
forums, and have read things about uninstalling all drivers and what not. Is
that usually a good idea, but since I'm basically keeping the same
motherboard it isn't too much of a problem?
 
open up msconfig and goto the boot settings. Check the detecthal option. Shut it down, put in the new motherboard, boot it back up and then once your back in go in and clear the detecthal option.


Post Originated from http://www.VistaForums.com Vista Support Forums
 
Don't mess with the software. It ain't broke yet so don't fix it.

A lot of that advice you quote might hold if you were upgrading XP to Vista
but you aren't. You're already using Vista.

If you are prepared for a worst case scenario (having to reinstall
everything) then what have you got to lose? The only thing that you have
that is irreplaceable is your personal data files and you say you have those
backed up. If you have to reinstall anything all you have to do is push
some buttons. The computer gets to do all the work. :)
 
Alright. I replaced the motherboard last night and everything went fairly
smooth. I planned for the unexpected, and the unexpected I didn't plan for
happened. I booted up with only 1 DVD drive and 1 hard drive (I have 3 hard
drives (SATA 1, 2 & 3 slots) and 2 DVD drives (SATA 4 & 5 slots) and I have
the named in corresponding order. My first hard drive being C drive, second
being D, third being E, first DVD drive being F, second being G. I booted it
with the C drive in SATA 1 and the F drive in SATA 4. However it stuck the
SATA 4 into the D drive spot, so now I how an imaginary D drive, and I had my
desktop stuff and apparently some other stuff on it, because the computer's a
bit funky. I know this sounds mildly complicated, but what should I do to fix
it? I've tried the computer management option in the Windows Admin thing in
Control Panel, and I can't rename the drive the D drive. Any ideas? Should I
use my backup I made with Acronis True Image to replace all of the C drive
and see if that fixes it?
 
Since you only had 2 drives connected the first became the C drive and the
second the D drive.
I am surprised that if you boot in that configuration that you cannot rename
the DVD "D" drive to drive "F" when only those two drives are connected.
What happens if you boot wilth your 3 SATA drives and no DVD drives
connected? Can you get them named C,D, and E using the Storage Management
Tool in Disk Management from Control Panel/Admin?
 
Thank you for the quick reply. And thank you for the completely obvious
advice that I was too busy whimpering on the verge of tears to think about.
Worked perfectly. There's a bit of .lnk files miscellaneously laying around,
but I guess I should be happy to have gotten off so easy. So, thank you to
all. I have successfully switched motherboards in Vista with little to no
trouble. Tell all! Now, I've got the CPU/RAM meter gadget running. I was
running 8GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM, and now I'm running 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz RAM.
Before the switch my RAM meter was barely above 5%, but now it's hovering
around 35% constantly. Any ideas? A quick jaunt to my Task Manager shows a
bunch of svchost.exe's taking up plenty of my new memory. What IS the
svchost, and why do I have so many, and can I make them go away?
 
Another tiny issue. I tried to initially run a restore with Acronis,
restoring the C drive, and it got a ways through and just kinda got stuck on
this one file (I left it on for hours overnight and nothing changed) and now
some odd things seem to be occurring. My screensaver no longer works, says an
error is preventing the slide show from working. And my H drive insists I
have files to be burned to a disc. My H drive is my virtual drive I use with
Alcohol 120% though. I also ran Disk Cleanup and I have 6GB of temp files...
is this normal?
 
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