Matt said:
If I want to just upgrade the CPU in my system would I have to reinstall the
OS (Win7 64).. I'm thinking the answer is no, but I've never just switched
out a CPU (well other than replacing a defective one once), I've always
done CPU&Mobo combo upgrades.
If changing from a single core to a multicore processor, there
would be a slight tweak to be done in Device Manager. The
"Computer" entry and HAL type would need to be changed, to
get all the cores to be recognized and used. That's not
a drop-dead issue, more of a performance issue.
The new processor must be supported by the BIOS. Check the CPU support
charts for the motherboard, for more info. (For example, on my
440BX motherboard, I needed to manually load a microcode patch,
to guarantee the processor was patched during boot. And that's because
the processor was not supported.)
A processor change, counts as one item in Activation.
If you've changed lots of stuff, you may have to re-activate the
OS either online or over the phone. This is not a big deal.
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm
"The WPA system checks ten categories of hardware:
6. Processor Type"
I don't even know what aspect of Processor Type, it triggers off
of. Whether it's frequency, number of cores, part number, or
what. But it's a possible item in activation. Modern processors
don't have serial numbers, and only one generation of
processors had them (Intel was supposed to remove them
from later products).
The Windows 7 recipe for activation, won't be exactly the
same as what is described in that article, but they're going
to keep some of the concepts there.
HTH,
Paul
)