Upgrading Motherboard and processor

[PhilB]

Hi all
I am about to upgrade my motherboard and processor,i would just like
to know what effects this will have on my O/S (Vista Home Premium SP1).Will i
have to reinstall everything?Can i just plug everything back in (HDDs
Graphics cards Sound card etc) and just carry on as if nothing has
happened?or are there more sinister things lurking that may bite me.
Any help will be much appreciated
Phil

 

[Mick Murphy]

Is it OEM or Retail vista disk?
With OEM, you are not supposed to Upgrade hardware, just replace, BUT.
With Retail disk, you can upgrade hardware.

Chances are that you will have to do a reinstall.
Your existing OS will think it is a new computer; which it really is!!!
Motherboard and CPU is the heart of the computer!

At the very least, you will have to re-activatre.

 

[DL]

If its OEM and its locked to origonal hardware you wont be able to.

 

[Mick Murphy]

There are 2 sorts of OEM. A lot of confusion about this!
Dell OEM includes their crap, and ties it to that motherboard.
If YOU buy an OEM vista disk, that is different from Dell's installed
garbage.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Is it OEM or Retail vista disk?
With OEM, you are not supposed to Upgrade hardware, just replace,

That's not correct. The OEM license permanently ties that copy to
Vista to the original computer it's installed on. There is *no*
restriction on upgrading hardware.

However, if it's one of the OEM copies that came with a computer sold
by a major manufacturer, it's probably BIOS-locked to the original
motherboard and a different one won't work with it.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

There are 2 sorts of OEM. A lot of confusion about this!
Dell OEM includes their crap, and ties it to that motherboard.
If YOU buy an OEM vista disk, that is different from Dell's installed
garbage.

Correct. The system builder OEM packs come with a straight Vista dvd. Only
the hologramming is different. You can even do upgrades in place with them.
They accept OEM, upgrade, and standard product keys interchangeably.

 

[Chipmunk]

Hi all
I am about to upgrade my motherboard and processor,i would just like
to know what effects this will have on my O/S (Vista Home Premium SP1).Will i
have to reinstall everything?Can i just plug everything back in (HDDs
Graphics cards Sound card etc) and just carry on as if nothing has
happened?or are there more sinister things lurking that may bite me.
Any help will be much appreciated
Phil

You can try this: run windows on the old hardware, uninstall all the
hardware and hardware drivers from windows that you intend to change. Eg
adding a new gfx card then go to the device manager and uninstall the
old grfx card and drivers, refuse any reboot requests shutdown, install
the new gfx card and reboot. Do the same for all the hardware you are
replacing, even the motherboard if your fitting a new one. It's not
guaranteed to work but if it does it could save you a lot of time and
effort. I have had this method work in some cases but it seems to depend
on what hardware you are updating, if your moving from IDE to SATA or 32
to 64 bit then this unlikely to work. Note: you may need to boot into
safe mode to do the uninstalls and if you reboot after vista will
reinstall most if not every thing from its backup cache so you'll have
to start over.

 

[Chipmunk]

Only problem with that method is that it is so difficult to actually
identify just which devices belong to the motherboard. There are all
manner of PCI, USB, sound and network drivers involved nowadays.

Agreed, more likely to fail if the new motherboard is by a different
manufacturer or entirely different chipset too, still maybe worth a try
for the time it would take verses the time it might save.

BTW works fine with Linux distros i've tried, just drop the drive in
another machine and boot, only ever needed to update the GFX drivers.
One exception; upgrading from 32bit to 64 bit.

 

[PhilB]

Agreed, more likely to fail if the new motherboard is by a different
manufacturer or entirely different chipset too, still maybe worth a try
for the time it would take verses the time it might save.

BTW works fine with Linux distros i've tried, just drop the drive in
another machine and boot, only ever needed to update the GFX drivers.
One exception; upgrading from 32bit to 64 bit.
Thanks for all the replys

I'm upgrading from an ecs NF650iSLIT-A with an E6400 duel core 2.13ghz to an
XFX Nforce 680i LT SLI with core 2 duo E8400 3ghz 6mb L2 cache 1333 Mhz Fsb
45nm technology.My version of Vista is an OEM version from Mesh wich was the
original computer.I have done a motherboard upgrade before but using the
original cpu (as above) and i had to reinstall vista which worked after
completely wiping HDDs but i don't want to have to do that again!The version
of home premium i am running is the 32bit version to SP1.Unfortunately
microsoft won't upgrade it to the 64bit version (OEM i suppose)so at the
moment i am sat here with a lot of moneys worth of gear at my feet but dare
not use it.

 

[PhilB]

When did you last activate Vista? Does it have the 'wipe the slate clean'
action that XP had with the shop bought OEM versions. I.e. after 6 months it
seems to just activate whatever the hardware?

JW
Vista was last activated about 3 months ago after a hd failure.I reinstalled vista to a spare hd and activation went without a problem.Also after christmas i had an accident with a pint of beer and an open case whiched wiped out the original asus motherboard and 2 x geforce 6400gs cards so i replaced the motherboard and graphics cards and vista started but i had to reactivate which went with no problems

so i presume the oem version of vista
that came with my original mesh computer does wipe the slate so to speak.I
still have a couple of items apart from the o/s that are from the original
mesh system (1 DVD R/W , 1 Hdd and the power switch),as i changed the case
and psu
Phil

 

[PhilB]

Hi all
I am about to upgrade my motherboard and processor,i would just like
to know what effects this will have on my O/S (Vista Home Premium SP1).Will i
have to reinstall everything?Can i just plug everything back in (HDDs
Graphics cards Sound card etc) and just carry on as if nothing has
happened?or are there more sinister things lurking that may bite me.
Any help will be much appreciated
Phil

Thanks for all the help
Went for broke and upgraded,removed my 2 IDE hdds
and just left my SATA drive, turned it on got to the bios setup, did a few
alterations and hey presto vista started first time!!!no reinstall
neccesary.The new cpe runs at 33 most of the time nipping up to about 38
under load,but time will tell i suppose.
Once again thanks
Phil