does a motherboard change need a fresh OS?

silk186

[H]ard|Gawd
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Windows 10 consumer preview is coming soon and I'm thinking of upgrading through the used market, so no set date. If I install win10 with my current MB/CPU and upgrade my should I do a fresh install of win10 when I upgrade or is it not necessary?
 
You should be absolutely fine with the current OS install. Windows 7 is pretty good at handling hardware changes but Windows 8 is amazing, I am sure windows 10 will be built on similar mechanics to allow you to do a hardware swap without issue. Only thing I've seen was the need to reactivate windows, but I'm not sure how Windows 10 preview would require some sort of reactivation.
 
It depends on the amount of DRM material you have. Certain Games/Music/etc are linked to your MB&CPU and when you change them it will deny you access, then you will have to reinstall.

If you don't have DRM stuff you should be ok.
 
Personally, I would do a fresh install... I just recently did a switch from a Z77 board to a Z87 on Windows 7 and it was very unstable. You need to make sure and clean out all drivers from the previous board.
 
I've had mixed results, the last time I did a swap I booted right into Windows 7 and after 2 or 3 reboots everything was nice and stable but my SSD performance was pretty bad. I did a clean install and the SSD was back to normal.
 
See Paragon P2P Adjust OS. It's part of some of their hard disk manager software suites. I use it regularly to strip out incompatible drivers and massage compatible ones into a hard drive that I move to different equipment. It handles most of the work automatically. Now granted there are plenty of times a fresh install is best..
 
I may be old school, and I don't change out my MB that often.....

but I was taught to install a fresh OS with something as dramatic as a new CPU and MB.
 
You'll know if you need to do a fresh install or not pretty quickly. Swap mobo, if you can't get back into windows use a boot cd to backup important stuff and fresh install.
 
I've personally done it with Windows 7 over a dozen times so far with no issues.
My main rig went from a Q6600> i7 870> i7 2600K> i7 3770K
The one I am on now went from an E5200> E6750> Q9550> i7 4790K
Both are original installs from August of 2009.

hal-9000-win-install-date-2015.jpg
hal-x100-win-install-2015.jpg
 
Formatting due to a CPU upgrade is COMPLETELY unnecessary....

You took that completely out of context......I believe it says CPU + MB.
I don't know too many people who buy a new MB and keep the old CPU. Generally it involves the combination.

I HAVE also simply replaced a CPU on an EXISTING MB and NOT fussed with the OS....that seems pretty intuitive.
 
It's not really necessary anymore, I went from a VIA based motherboard chipset to an Intel based one and didn't have to format or anything, just plug and play. Windows had a "Preparing new devices" message briefly, but that was it. Formatting is still useful though, it's like cleaning your house.
 
I do understand that re-installing can be nice because it wipes out old and unneeded files. But it is completely unnecessary. If what you want is a very clean system, then re-install. But, if all you want is a well running system, you don't have to.
 
I will try to match up my upgrade with the release of win10 preview
 
Formatting due to a CPU upgrade is COMPLETELY unnecessary....

TOTALLY man. I remember finding old ass pentium 1 machines on curbsides and upgrading the cpu's. No probs whatsoever, other than the fact that win 95 loves to take forever to start. Man, the thrill of upgrading a 75mhz compaq to a 233. Those were the times when you would **really** notice a CPU boost.

edit: realized I was a bit late to the game. sorry guys,
 
I went from LGA 775 to LGA 2011-3 X99 (just keeping the GPU and storage), should I do a clean install?
 
Nope.

I've gone from an nVidia 980a to AMD 790X to AMD 890FX to Intel X58 to without any issues in Windows 7 64-bit.
 
I went from a Xeon 3060 w/ P35 asus board to an X38 E8400 Rog Asus board then my current X58 Evga board which has seen an I7 920 D0 and now an X5650 B1 Xeon all on the same Win 7 x64 Pro install from 2010
 
nope, never reinstalled OS, its a waste of time.

I do it at work, couple times a week, when image from different PC gets re-deployed on new PC with zero issues.

if possible it helps to uninstall some drivers first, first 2-3 boots up will be little slower while OS redetects everythings
 
I would rather have the piece of mind of reinstalling Windows when changing to a new chipset. Left over drivers could be a possible problem down the road. I also have different PCs for specific tasks, including a server, so I do not have to worry about data on my gaming machine. Generally my HTPC's and server I do not need to mess with. Backing up game profiles and reinstalling games and drivers on a 100Mb connection does not take too long. Now if your bandwidth limited, then yes reinstalling might be much more of a hassle.

It really comes down to your setup. If its going to take you all day to re-configure your setup, then its prob not worth the hassle.

I do agree though that Windows7/8 is much better at handling new hardware then XP was.

At minimum I would at least uninstall all old drivers though.
 
Windows Updates takes so long, you can be there for a few hours doing updates on a fresh install.
Have no idea why Windows does incremental updates, ideally, it would be nice for WU to one large batch instead of the 2 or 3 that it does.
 
Windows Updates takes so long, you can be there for a few hours doing updates on a fresh install.
Have no idea why Windows does incremental updates, ideally, it would be nice for WU to one large batch instead of the 2 or 3 that it does.

I agree WU can take forever. I wish there were still service packs, I used to integrate them into the installation media. There are tricks also for getting a Windows 8 key to work on a fresh Windows 8.1 install also. You can slipstream updates into a Windows 8.1 install, but there is no easy way like a service pack with all of the updates in one package.

Another reason why I prefer a Linux OS. If it wasn't for games I would not even use a Windows OS.
 
Just changed out to a 4790K and ASUS Sabertooth Z97 on the same Windows 8.1 install with no problems.
 
Not a single person in here has mentioned sysprep.

If you dont want to spend the time to resinstall everything (just patching up takes foreverrrrrrr), just use sysprep.

It removes ALL drivers including mobo infs, and reseals the system (factory reset) like you get when you buy a new PC from an OEM.

I used it to on xp, vista and 7 when changing MOBOs on several machines and NEVER had to do a reinstall

That having been said, the registry does aquire a lot of junk over time, so if you have the time, a fresh install is always preferred.
 
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Not a single person in here has mentioned sysprep.

If you dont want to spend the time to resinstall everything (just patching up takes foreverrrrrrr), just use sysprep.

It removes ALL drivers including mobo infs, and reseals the system (factory reset) like you get when you buy a new PC from an OEM.

I used it to on xp, vista and 7 when changing MOBOs on several machines and NEVER had to do a reinstall

That having been said, the registry does aquire a lot of junk over time, so if you have the time, a fresh install is always preferred.

Sysprep is not needed with Win 7. I used Sysprep on XP machines since XP hardly ever booted up with a motherboard change
 
Not a single person in here has mentioned sysprep.

If you dont want to spend the time to resinstall everything (just patching up takes foreverrrrrrr), just use sysprep.

It removes ALL drivers including mobo infs, and reseals the system (factory reset) like you get when you buy a new PC from an OEM.

I used it to on xp, vista and 7 when changing MOBOs on several machines and NEVER had to do a reinstall

That having been said, the registry does aquire a lot of junk over time, so if you have the time, a fresh install is always preferred.

Registry cleaning is largely unnecessary, and I've never had issues with conflicting motherboard drivers.
 
with XP I used sysprep, with windows 7 I started out using sysprep, but later realized its not necessary

Every since windows 8, you absolutely don't need sysprep.
 
It still better to use sysprep to clean out the old drivers.

I realize it's not nessisary on 7 or 8, but not using it leaves the old drivers in place.

I prefer a clean system.
 
It still better to use sysprep to clean out the old drivers.

I realize it's not nessisary on 7 or 8, but not using it leaves the old drivers in place.

I prefer a clean system.

Basically there is less potential for a problem, yes you may be fine but I prefer the peace of mind.
 
Within this thread both sides to the question can be seen. Some users have reported that they have experienced issues from driver incompatibilities when transitioning between platforms, others have reported that the new environment runs without issues. The answer that can be determined from those reported experiences is that while yes, an environment can often be transitioned between hardware platforms, no, it is not recommended. If you do attempt the transition, you will want to ensure that you are prepared to perform a clean installation in the case of failure and that any data is backed up.

Even when performing a Windows deployment the recommended advice is to avoid compatibility issues between hardware platforms. The recommendation is to prepare the original image for deployment in a virtual machine, isolated from complex drivers that are prone to causing such issues. It is also recommended to isolate the image from any applications, allowing the deployment software, such as the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, to select the required applications at the time of deployment.

Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
Windows for IT Pros on TechNet
 
01-18-2015, 01:39 PM
KILLER_K [H]ardness Supreme, 7.0 Years Status: KILLER_K is online now

Sysprep for the win.


Sometimes people either skip over posts or do not read the whole thread from the beginning to the end also.

Not a single person in here has mentioned sysprep.

If you dont want to spend the time to resinstall everything (just patching up takes foreverrrrrrr), just use sysprep.

It removes ALL drivers including mobo infs, and reseals the system (factory reset) like you get when you buy a new PC from an OEM.

I used it to on xp, vista and 7 when changing MOBOs on several machines and NEVER had to do a reinstall

That having been said, the registry does aquire a lot of junk over time, so if you have the time, a fresh install is always preferred.
 
No worries at all. It seems everyone skipped over it. There is so much back and forth in here you can't really post much now. It gets flooded by other post or another topic as of lately.
 
I will not perform a re-install for my upcoming build.
Beware my wrath if this approach fails!! ;)
 
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