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changing m/board

daft1druid
Resolved

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Posted June 1, 2012 at 12:58PM

I am changing my motherboard and case, and am doing a system image on an external hard drive first. When I have transferred all my drives to the new case and re-installed Windows, will I be able to transfer all my old files and settings back on from the system image? Thanks, Paul

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johndrew

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Posted June 1, 2012 at 1:48PM

If you have an OEM copy of Windows, changing the motherboard is considered a change of PC and you may well have trouble activating it as the original activation code in the image is unlikely to be valid.

In terms of the system image, all files and setting will be present on installation.

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KRONOS the First

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Posted June 1, 2012 at 3:12PM

If you have trouble activating online then take the phone option and you will have little trouble.

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted June 1, 2012 at 3:31PM

If you are fitting a different board then the drivers in your image of windows will not suit the new board and you will probably not beable to boot from the restored image.

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Ian in Northampton

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Posted June 1, 2012 at 4:54PM

But won't drivers be an issue? The 'old' drivers on the system image presumably won't work on the new motherboard - so those will need to be installed?

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Ian in Northampton

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Posted June 1, 2012 at 4:55PM

Whoops - should've refreshed before responding...

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KRONOS the First

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Posted June 1, 2012 at 5:28PM

He is reinstalling Windows so drivers are not going to be an issue. He will have to reapply any settings but copying files across is a simple enough process.

Of course all your programs will need to be installed again.Here is a program I use as it will install all the popular software in one .exe file.

Ninite.

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Ian in Northampton

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Posted June 1, 2012 at 5:36PM

Chronus: I take your point. Oh, and - I can't recommend ninite too highly. I tell it I want Chrome, Avast, IrfanView, VLC Player, Adobe Reader, WinRAR, two kinds of Flash and some other stuff - and it just gets on with it, doing the install I would have done myself (e.g. no extra toolbars, changing default settings and so on) completely unattended. An absolutely magical discovery.

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robinofloxley

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Posted June 1, 2012 at 6:49PM

An Image can be a good idea since it means no files/folders, profiles etc will be forgotten from the old system.

After fitting new m/b and completing the clean install, the Image can be mounted, not Restored, and files/folders copied over manually.

-x-x-

Some backup apps will restore to dissimilar hardware, but they are the paid versions and it has to be done a certain way I think.

I have seen some ideas for restoring a normal 'Free' Image to another machines or m/b.

The author said it may work if you go into Device Manager and uninstall every driver you can find (HDD excepted I presume) and make an Image of that.

If you have space and want to try, you could do that. Make a normal Image first, then a driverless Image on the off chance it could work.

Images should always be verified of course before major surgery.

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