M
Michael Czajka
Guest
Vista: Upgrading a motherboard without a clean installor even reparing the installation
Hi,
Lets preface this by saying that M$ should be shot for making it so hard to upgrade hardware.
Suggestions for changing over:
It's usually the graphics driver that gives you the blue screen. Therefore before commencing the changeover turn the current graphics driver off... or delete it completely.
You can also disable any other driver or chipset you think might cause crashing... I suspect the more drivers you turn off the less trouble you are likely to have. It's fairly easy to turn them back on again if necessary... so it's a reversible procedure.
I just successfully changed over a 690 AMD chip based motherboard from ASUS for a 780 AMD chip based motherboard from ASUS... without having to do any repair of the OS or reinstallation. Most of the drivers simply installed all by themselves... and the rest were added from the driver disk.
Yes it does help if you have similar hardware... so upgrade the motherboard first... then add in any new hardware like new graphics cards.
Another trick you can use is to put the new motherboard in a new case... and then if it crashes badly you can simply switch the hard drive back to the orginal case and board (whereupon it normally boots up without problems) and tweak it some more and repair any damage before trying again.
If you happen to have more than one board available or more than one system that needs to be upgraded you can also try upgrading the other system... as sometimes one install is more compatible with the new hardware than the other one.
Yet another method of simplifying your life is to do a copy of the original data to a bigger and faster drive at the same time as you do your upgrade. That way if everything fails you still can go back to your old drive and try again. This is a zero risk strategy... I simply use it as an opportunity to upgrade my hard drive on a regular basis.
It's generally faster to do this kind of tweaking than to reinstall everything from scratch.
I've basically been carrying the same OS over for about 10 years now... averaging a motherboard upgrade every 6 months... along with hard drives and all the rest on a regular basis.
The only time you ever get caught out is when M$ sells an upgrade product but you find out that by upgrade they mean you have to do a fresh install... in that case you can leave all your existing info on the HD ie. leave the old OS as it is... and install the new OS into a new folder. That way all the old data is still easily accessible if you need to load drivers or data files. It's faster than loading it from a backup DVD (which you should do as well).
I think there is also a safe mode on Vista (which I've never had to use yet)... obviously it would be worth trying to use that if the OS keeps crashing... this sometimes works and allows you to clear out whatever driver (usually the graphics driver) is causing the problem.
Hope that helps.
PS. It definitely is not necessary to do a clean install when upgrading a motherboard or other hardware. However there doesn't seem to be any info on Vista suggesting this is possible.
Basically the strategies you use on XP upgrading seem to work on Vista upgrading as well... unfortunately few people have documented XP upgrading strategies clearly either.
PPS. Having done all this... and probably finishing at 2am... MS then makes you activate your OS... mostly you end up ringing them (net activation only works the first few times)... fortunately it's not too hard to do most of the time... although if you get a real person... they often seem to think it's unusual that you've been upgrading your computer yet again. Not something you appreciate at 2am!
Hi,
Lets preface this by saying that M$ should be shot for making it so hard to upgrade hardware.
Suggestions for changing over:
It's usually the graphics driver that gives you the blue screen. Therefore before commencing the changeover turn the current graphics driver off... or delete it completely.
You can also disable any other driver or chipset you think might cause crashing... I suspect the more drivers you turn off the less trouble you are likely to have. It's fairly easy to turn them back on again if necessary... so it's a reversible procedure.
I just successfully changed over a 690 AMD chip based motherboard from ASUS for a 780 AMD chip based motherboard from ASUS... without having to do any repair of the OS or reinstallation. Most of the drivers simply installed all by themselves... and the rest were added from the driver disk.
Yes it does help if you have similar hardware... so upgrade the motherboard first... then add in any new hardware like new graphics cards.
Another trick you can use is to put the new motherboard in a new case... and then if it crashes badly you can simply switch the hard drive back to the orginal case and board (whereupon it normally boots up without problems) and tweak it some more and repair any damage before trying again.
If you happen to have more than one board available or more than one system that needs to be upgraded you can also try upgrading the other system... as sometimes one install is more compatible with the new hardware than the other one.
Yet another method of simplifying your life is to do a copy of the original data to a bigger and faster drive at the same time as you do your upgrade. That way if everything fails you still can go back to your old drive and try again. This is a zero risk strategy... I simply use it as an opportunity to upgrade my hard drive on a regular basis.
It's generally faster to do this kind of tweaking than to reinstall everything from scratch.
I've basically been carrying the same OS over for about 10 years now... averaging a motherboard upgrade every 6 months... along with hard drives and all the rest on a regular basis.
The only time you ever get caught out is when M$ sells an upgrade product but you find out that by upgrade they mean you have to do a fresh install... in that case you can leave all your existing info on the HD ie. leave the old OS as it is... and install the new OS into a new folder. That way all the old data is still easily accessible if you need to load drivers or data files. It's faster than loading it from a backup DVD (which you should do as well).
I think there is also a safe mode on Vista (which I've never had to use yet)... obviously it would be worth trying to use that if the OS keeps crashing... this sometimes works and allows you to clear out whatever driver (usually the graphics driver) is causing the problem.
Hope that helps.
PS. It definitely is not necessary to do a clean install when upgrading a motherboard or other hardware. However there doesn't seem to be any info on Vista suggesting this is possible.
Basically the strategies you use on XP upgrading seem to work on Vista upgrading as well... unfortunately few people have documented XP upgrading strategies clearly either.
PPS. Having done all this... and probably finishing at 2am... MS then makes you activate your OS... mostly you end up ringing them (net activation only works the first few times)... fortunately it's not too hard to do most of the time... although if you get a real person... they often seem to think it's unusual that you've been upgrading your computer yet again. Not something you appreciate at 2am!