Dead MB/ Switching Brands/ Will my SSD get wiped?

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DW1911

n00b
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Aug 30, 2014
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My Z87 MB died suddenly (Brand X). Never was happy with this flagship board for 10 months. After contacting them they offered an RMA, I declined as they never supported me through all my past frustrations with the board (PCI slots not detecting anything installed, it goes on from there). I bought a new Z97 form a different company. I've heard a lot of folks have switched MBs without reloading the OS however they had the opportunity to uninstall all the MB drivers ahead of time. I own a retail version of window 7 so there is no worry of reactivation. I'll be using the same cpu, memory, DVD, ect...

Has anyone successfully accomplished this? What has been your experience when unexpected hardware failures have left you in the dark?


I have important things backed up, but the hassle of all the windows updates, reactivation of licensed software that will require tons of emails and phone calls has made me sick.
 
Agreed you should have no problems with this. It is possible that due to the significant hardware changes with the MOBO you may need to reactivate Windows as well as MS Office if you have it.

Its a super quick phone call for each I've never once had a problem reactivating windows.
 
drescherjm said:
You should not have any problem at all with this.
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deaedius said:
Agreed you should have no problems with this. It is possible that due to the significant hardware changes with the MOBO you may need to reactivate Windows as well as MS Office if you have it.

Its a super quick phone call for each I've never once had a problem reactivating windows.
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Thanks guys, new board should be here next week and hopefully will last awhile.
 
I would say its a total crap shoot. In any case you won't need to WIPE your drive, it's enough to reinstall windows on top of the old one if it refuses to boot using the old setup.
 
B00nie said:
I would say its a total crap shoot. In any case you won't need to WIPE your drive, it's enough to reinstall windows on top of the old one if it refuses to boot using the old setup.
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I'm hoping for the easiest outcome, all I can do is keep my chin up and pants down, that way I'm ready for anything when I hit the power button.

I could try and boot in safe mode removing all chipset and mother board drivers then reboot?
 
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DW1911 said:
I'm hoping for the easiest outcome, all I can do is keep my chin up and pants down, that way I'm ready for anything when I hit the power button.

I could try and boot in safe mode removing all chipset and mother board drivers then reboot?
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Going to safe mode and removing drivers before the first 'real' boot won't hurt for sure. But I can't think of any permanent damage being done from just trying to boot normally and then if problems appear, try removing the old drivers.

Sometimes residue from older drivers (especially ones of another brand) can cause stability or performance problems. I would definately reinstall windows if I swapped the motherboard.
 
My Windows 7 installation went from NF980a (nVidia AMD chipset) to 790X (AMD chipset) to 890FX to X58 and now X79. I never really had to uninstall old motherboard drivers, though I did so after the swap anyways. Eventually wiped it due to a virus, not because of various motherboard changes.
 
Tsumi said:
My Windows 7 installation went from NF980a (nVidia AMD chipset) to 790X (AMD chipset) to 890FX to X58 and now X79. I never really had to uninstall old motherboard drivers, though I did so after the swap anyways. Eventually wiped it due to a virus, not because of various motherboard changes.
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Like I said it's a crap shoot. Sometimes you get scott free and sometimes you crash and burn.
 
Make backups of stuff on your boot drive just in case you end up needing to rebuild it.
 
B00nie said:
Like I said it's a crap shoot. Sometimes you get scott free and sometimes you crash and burn.
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Looks like I'm scott free. Loaded all the drivers, set my memory XMP to profile 2 (2400) windows boots in 17 seconds, however it takes another 45 seconds for my GTX fan profile to load along with a few other programs that loaded fast before. I'll uninstall and reinstall those programs. Then I'll check for newer bios and chipset drivers, overclock the i7 4770k and stress test. Everything looks good so far.
 
I had some items under services in msconfig that was stopping my EVGA precision from loading quick. It's all good now. Real happy with new MOBO other then the safe to eject USB icon on task bar that's actually my SSD? I did read about this before, just can't remember right now.
 
Something to do with AHCI settings and installing proper drivers and something like that. I believe your motherboard should allow you to change hot swap settings for each plug, I would set it to disabled for your internal drives.
 
Tsumi said:
Something to do with AHCI settings and installing proper drivers and something like that. I believe your motherboard should allow you to change hot swap settings for each plug, I would set it to disabled for your internal drives.
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You hit the nail on the head Tsumi, thanks for jogging my 56k brain cells.
 
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