Motherboard upgrade advice

[norm]

hehehe...a clean install is ALWAYS best...period!
I guess you may have now come to that conclusion, right mr computer expert?
Frank

There is some disagreement as to whether "a clean install is ALWAYS
best". See the following:

A clean install would have solved all your probs, instead of mucking
around with an upgrade. You want us to think you are cluey; you should
know upgrades are the rotten way to go for ANY windows OS.

That is completely false. Back in the days of Windows 9X it was often
true, but with modern versions of Windows, an upgrade replaces almost
everything anyway, and usually works very well.

Unless you are starting with a problem-ridden Windows installation,
it's almost always worth at least trying the upgrade. It usually saves
a lot of time as compared to a clean installation, and worst case, if
it doesn't work well, you can always do a clean installation.

My Vista installation here, which I have been running problem-free
since mid-November, was an upgrade from XP Professional.

-- Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User

 

[Guest]

Hi

I currently have Vista Home Basic 32Bit Retail upgrade edition running on my
computer. I want to upgrade my motherboard and CPU for increased performance,
but I'm not sure how Vista will react to such a hardware upgrade. Will I need
to reinstall my copy of Vista if I change the Motherboard? Also will I need
to reactivate my copy?

Any advice would be appreciated because I can't seem to get a definitive
answer when searching the internet.

Thanks

Some hardware upgrades can be carried out without reinstallation and
activation. The ones that I have carried out are changing the graphics card,
memory, processor and DVD drives. Other upgrades will require you to
reinstall and activate Vista - these include installing new hard drives (if
replacing your existing drive) and installing a new motherboard. This is
mainly due to the differences in chipsets between motherboards, particularly
as regards the driver required to access the storage devices and also changes
in peripheral device support such as on-board graphics, sound and firewire.
You may be lucky with your motherboard upgrade, but the chances are that the
HAL (hardware abstraction layer) that is installed on your current system
will be partly incompatible with your new motherboard, giving rise to BSODs
and other system instabilities. In short, when carrying out any major system
upgrade, such as replacing the motherboard or replacing several components at
the same time, then it is always advisable to reinstall the operating system
as the correct drivers will then be installed for your hardware.