Moving To A New Motherbard With Existing OS Installation

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
R

raotor

Distinguished
Nov 3, 2007
37
0
18,530
Hello,

Does anyone know what happens if you were to connect your hard drive with
Windows 7 installed onto a new motherboard that uses a different chipset? I
am thinking of doing this by installing Windows 7 onto my current Intel P45
chipset board (Asus P5Q) and at some near future point swap out the
motherboard with an Asus H97 board with Core i3 and DDR3 memory.

I don't know how Windows would cope booting into a new chipset/memory
environment and wondered if anyone has done this and what happened.

 
Solution
Rogue Leader
It won't boot. You will get the windows logo and it will crash and reboot. You probably can get into safe mode, but changing out drivers etc is a huge mess and it will never really run right. Also Win 7 and beyond ties the install to the hardware so even if you somehow get it to work right it will give you errors because of the different mobo hardware.

Short version, it won't work, re-install windows when you swap mobos.
Sort by date Sort by votes
Rogue Leader

Rogue Leader

It's a trap!
Moderator
Dec 22, 2014
32,727
2,807
113,640
It won't boot. You will get the windows logo and it will crash and reboot. You probably can get into safe mode, but changing out drivers etc is a huge mess and it will never really run right. Also Win 7 and beyond ties the install to the hardware so even if you somehow get it to work right it will give you errors because of the different mobo hardware.

Short version, it won't work, re-install windows when you swap mobos.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
bjsm

bjsm

Distinguished
Jul 25, 2011
913
0
19,160


I love you :) explained my short answer very well
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
J

jitpublisher

Splendid
May 16, 2006
8,747
2
31,960
Its a crapshoot. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it wont. One thing most people agree on, new motherboard, you should do a new installation. Even if you can get it to boot, and get all the new drivers installed, many times it will end being buggy acting.
This is a great time to move to an SSD, if you don't have one yet.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
skylanepilot

skylanepilot

Honorable
Apr 9, 2013
86
0
10,640


Exactly this. I've seen images work on different machines, but it's always a sloppy mess. You're just asking for issues, even if it works.

Adding memory or upgrading a graphics card? No need to reinstall the OS. However, a motherboard has a ton of new hardware on it. They all require different drivers. The existing drivers from your old motherboard will just dirty and complicate everything.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom