Change motherboard

[Altero]

Is there any procedure or trick to have the possibility to change motherboard
with different chipset, without reinstalling Vista?
Thank you very much indeed!

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

If you're thinking of something like the Win9x trick of deleting the enum
branch under HKLM in the registry, no, that won't work. Installations are
much more complex now, often necessitating reinstallation for subtantial
hardware changes. If the replacement are of similar spec's, then there is a
possibility you can do without the reinstall, otherwise not.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Depends on the the mobo, chipset, and whether Vista is x86 or x64. How
about some specifics.

 

[JW]

My MOBO died 2 weeks ago while in sleep mode and I installed a new one
yesterday.
The system had a Intel Motherboard, an Intel HT CPU, and 1 GB of memory.
It was running Vista Home Premium with SP1 RC1 installed.
My new MOBO is a Gigabyte Model with a different Intel chipset, an Intel
Core2 Duo CPU, and 2 GB of memory.

The disk drive and the graphics card were retained from the old system.
When I turned on the system with only power, monitor cable and PS2 mouse and
keyboard connected the system came right out of sleep mode and displayed my
desktop. Needless to say I was very surprised. My mouse and keyboard cable
are PS2 extension cables and I had them reversed so was unable to proceed
further so I shutdown the system, reversed the PS2 cables then connected my
Ethernet router cable and my cable TV coax cable
I rebooted in safe mode and everything worked except I had to reconfigure my
MC TV settings.
I got an alert that hardware changes had been made and I would have to
reactivate the system within 3 days.
Later in the day I proceeded to activate the system, expecting to have to go
through phone activation
To my amazement the system activated over the internet without any problem.

 

[Altero]

Depends on the the mobo, chipset, and whether Vista is x86 or x64. How
about some specifics.

Chipset is different. From Intel 875P to Intel P35
MB from P4C800-E Deluxe to P5K-E WiFi
Vista is x86

 

[Dustin Harper]

To tell you the truth, I've had some very good luck with Vista and replacing
motherboards. I shouldn't have done it that way, but I did... Kinda went
against my own advice and just replaced the board, CPU, RAM, video card (had
to reactivate, but it ran fine). Went from an Abit AMD board with Athlon 64
4400+ and an AGP ATI video card to a Gigabyte P35 Intel board with a Core 2
Duo 6800 and DDR2 RAM and a PCI-e ATI video card. Rebooted and it came up to
the desktop, loaded drivers, had to reactivate and I was good to go. I
wasn't expecting it, but I was eager to get back up and going. Soon after, I
did reinstall as it was a good idea to do...

You might have to do a startup install. I'm not sure if doing an upgrade on
that would work, but it might.

 

[Altero]

My MOBO died 2 weeks ago while in sleep mode and I installed a new one
yesterday.
The system had a Intel Motherboard, an Intel HT CPU, and 1 GB of memory.
It was running Vista Home Premium with SP1 RC1 installed.
My new MOBO is a Gigabyte Model with a different Intel chipset, an Intel
Core2 Duo CPU, and 2 GB of memory.

The disk drive and the graphics card were retained from the old system.
When I turned on the system with only power, monitor cable and PS2 mouse and
keyboard connected the system came right out of sleep mode and displayed my
desktop. Needless to say I was very surprised. My mouse and keyboard cable
are PS2 extension cables and I had them reversed so was unable to proceed
further so I shutdown the system, reversed the PS2 cables then connected my
Ethernet router cable and my cable TV coax cable
I rebooted in safe mode and everything worked except I had to reconfigure my
MC TV settings.
I got an alert that hardware changes had been made and I would have to
reactivate the system within 3 days.
Later in the day I proceeded to activate the system, expecting to have to go
through phone activation
To my amazement the system activated over the internet without any problem.

JW, that's very interesting indeed, thanks for telling us your experience!

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You may have to do no more than the reinstallation of drivers but likely
will have to do an install. If Vista came preinstalled on your computer you
may need new media (if the current installation is a BIOS-locked version).
If you purchased a full edition of Vista (not an upgrade) you may be able to
do an in-place upgrade. In any case it is imperative that you back up your
files and settings with the Windows Easy Transfer wizard. An image back up
would only get you back where you are now.

 

[Altero]

To tell you the truth, I've had some very good luck with Vista and replacing
motherboards. I shouldn't have done it that way, but I did... Kinda went
against my own advice and just replaced the board, CPU, RAM, video card (had
to reactivate, but it ran fine). Went from an Abit AMD board with Athlon 64
4400+ and an AGP ATI video card to a Gigabyte P35 Intel board with a Core 2
Duo 6800 and DDR2 RAM and a PCI-e ATI video card. Rebooted and it came up to
the desktop, loaded drivers, had to reactivate and I was good to go. I
wasn't expecting it, but I was eager to get back up and going. Soon after, I
did reinstall as it was a good idea to do...

You might have to do a startup install. I'm not sure if doing an upgrade on
that would work, but it might.

Thank you too Dustin, your experience is important as well.
So, it seems there's no a rule for this operation (hardware changes) but
there is some possibility that it can be successful. So I can do nothing
but try!

 

[Altero]

Thank you too Dustin, your experience is important as well.
So, it seems there's no a rule for this operation (hardware changes) but
there is some possibility that it can be successful. So I can do nothing
but try!

Would only like to thank everybody for all these suggestions
After changing the MB I will report the results.
Thanks again!

 

[Xenomorph]

With Windows XP, the biggest issue was the hard drive controller chipset
when moving from one motherboard to another.

If drivers are loaded for an Intel chipset, and you swap in a VIA
motherboard, you'd get a STOP error with "Inaccessible_Boot_Device" during
boot.

The trick is to switch the hard drive controller chipset to
Generic/Microsoft first, and then swap out the motherboard.

This *might* work with Vista, but I have never tried it (yet). I've done it
several times with XP though.

If it does not work, a "Repair Install" may be all that is needed. There is
no loss of data with a Repair Install.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Vista does not have a repair install. In Vista you must do an in-place
upgrade which unfortunately is not always possible (with x86 upgrade edition
product keys, for example) if the OS becomes inoperable.

 

[Xenomorph]

I was afraid of something like that.

I've had little luck with that whole "Upgrade" thing with Vista.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

It is a concern with Vista x86 though shouldn't be with Vista x64.

 

[JW]

Vista does have a boot install disk repair option, however, it does not
perform the same operations that the XP boot repair option did. See the
following link:

http://vistasupport.mvps.org/windows_vista_repair_options.htm

Also see the Automatic Recovery paragraph in the following link.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905071.aspx

The Automatic Recovery capability probably explains why my system accepted
the new MOBO without any involvement on my part.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

It more likely that your system did not need a different hal.dll file. If
you are running Vista x64, there is only one ACPI Multiprocessor hal for all
systems. I'm not sure if that is true of x64 as well but perhaps.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Correction: "x64" in the last line sb "x86". Sorry.

 

[JW]

I am running Vista 32 bit since my old CPU was a Intel HT CPU which did not
support a 64 bit OS.