Vista - Replacing motherboard and keeping hard drive

Hi,

I'm about to replace my motherboard, memory, video card etc, but not my hard
drive on a Vista PC. Ideally I'd like to just rebuild the machine and plug
in the old drive and click repair (aka Win XP) but is this possible in
Vista?

I've got a number of VPCs set up on the drive and I'd really like to avoid
the pain of downloading and a reinstalling them all again.

Thanks

John

'click repair'?

generally an OS that is installed on a driver won't like a new hardware upgrade and you`ll get lots of exciting bluescreens of death etc. I would suggest renaming your vista folders and installing afresh (not formatting) and then copy the virtual drivers over from your previous installation.

"John" <John74211@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23STl4RTGIHA.4296@xxxxxxMost of the time it is unnecessary to do a repair after swapping
motherboard. If you're having to repair then it means you have left Windows
set to boot using incompatible storage controller drivers.
In future, before you swap out the motherboard, go into Device Manage -> IDE
/ ATAPI Controllers, and double click the controller in there and go to
update driver -> do not search -> manually select driver from a list, and
change to "Standard whatever". You do not need/want to do anything with the
child-devices ("Primary Channel", "Secondary Channel") - leave these alone,
it's the parent device - the controller, that needs it's driver reverting to
a more generic one.

So you are changing it from VIA 8237x Ultra ATA, or SiS Integrated IDE, or
Intel 8201 whatever, to "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE", or "Standard Hard
Disk Controller" or whatever.

This gives you a pretty good chance that it'll boot up just fine with the
new motherboard, although there are some exceptions. Sometimes you need to
load the drivers up as RAID drivers which is a bit more involved.

Procedure should probably be the same for Vista, unless they've altered
things so that it's not necessary any more (i.e. falling back to a generic
driver when the configured driver fails).

John wrote:
Sadly, Vista lacks the repair (in-place upgrade) capabilities of WinXP.
You can try, but you may end up performing a clean installation, anyway.


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Carl Farrington wrote:Sorry, but things have changed a lot since Win9X and WinNT. Both Win2K
and WinXP almoist always require at least a repair installation upon the
change of the motherboard.





--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

"Bruce Chambers" <bchambers@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eGQ8ynXGIHA.4476@xxxxxxThe process I was referring to was for Windows XP. I know what I am doing
and have done it hundreds of times. Doesn't the message
"INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" suggest anything to you?

Carl Farrington wrote:
Sure, but the storage device controllers are just a small portion of a
modern motherboard's components. Your technique may well allow WinXP to
boot on the new motherboard, but it won't result in a stable
installation. Many more drivers need to be replaced, hence the
preference for a repair installation by experienced technicians.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

"Bruce Chambers" <bchambers@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23OIMlqZGIHA.4684@xxxxxxIt results in a perfectly fine installation almost every time, as long as
the architectures aren't light years apart. It doens't fix mismatched HALs,
e.g. if moving from a non-ACPI machine, you'll still have no ACPI after
swapping to a newer board, but this is rarely a problem anyway. A more
common problem is motherboards failing due to bad capacitors, and
same-brand-chipset motherboards not being available.

The only thing to be aware of is if moving from an IDE or (IDE-emulated
SATA) system to an AHCI system you would want to change to the manufacturers
AHCI driver rather than to Microsoft's Standard PCI IDE driver.

I'm afraid the preference is down to ignorance, not experience.

BS! It works 50% of the time on XP.
But, it also causes an unstable OS, as the orginal hardware Drivers are
still installed.
Listen to other people's experience cockhead!

"Carl Farrington" wrote:

Carl Farrington wrote:
This is a new usage of "perfectly fine" with which I am not familiar.
What is your criteria? One failure in 3 equals "close enough?"


I don't get paid for "almost." I have to stand behind my work; "good
enough" won't do.


And a new usage of the word "rarely!"
Your point?
All of which supports my position, rather than your own.


Ah, yes. Offer insult when reason fails.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot