Is it easier these days to swap out the motherboard without reinstalling Windows 10?

[fpbear]

Last time I checked was years ago, when I was running Windows 7. At that time a clean install was the recommended approach. Now I'm running Windows 10 Pro and I'm wondering if Microsoft has made it easier to swap out the motherboard and CPU without having to reinstall everything.

I have an Asus Z77 Sabertooth (LGA 1155) motherboard, and looking to swap it out with the latest workstation motherboard, processor, and memory. It takes me weeks, maybe even months, to configure all of the software installed on the system, so I'd like to avoid doing a total clean install if possible. The current setup is very stable and everything was carefully installed on top of a clean Windows 10 Pro.

I remember reading about enterprise tools that would strip out the underlying hardware configuration, that was a while ago. Has Microsoft introduced new ways to make these upgrades with less disruption?

 

[repoman0]

You should be able to just boot up with no issues. I've done it twice, once from Sandy Bridge -> Skylake and again Skylake -> Ryzen. The first swap didn't require a new product key or activation but the second swap did ... I used another one of my old Win 7 Pro keys and it worked fine. This was a few weeks ago.

 

[Shmee]

You should be able to do it and then update drivers, though no guarantee. As mentioned, you may need to reactivate windows.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

You should be able to just boot up with no issues. I've done it twice, once from Sandy Bridge -> Skylake and again Skylake -> Ryzen. The first swap didn't require a new product key or activation but the second swap did ... I used another one of my old Win 7 Pro keys and it worked fine. This was a few weeks ago.

No need to waste another key. Make a Microsoft account and log onto the system with it. You can immediately go back to a local account afterwards. Then when you swap hardware, log in to your Microsoft account and use the windows activation troubleshooter - choose the recently changed hardware option and it should activate. I have had no issues with any of the systems I have used this with.

 

[Ratman6161]

You should be able to do it and then update drivers, though no guarantee. As mentioned, you may need to reactivate windows.

Even though it generally works pretty well these days, I like to take the opportunity to cl4an install...but that's just personal preference.

But even when planning a clean install, I'd still boot it up at least once on the old install and get it connected to the internet.

I went from an i72600k to an r5 16o.o and during the first boot up it was still showing activated. Once activated on the new hardware you can clean install and it shoulda still be activated.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I replaced a FX8350 combo with a Ryzen combo yesterday. Used the Asrock driver utility in the UEFI to get them. It went flawlessly, and as I wrote earlier, simply logged into my MS account and ran the activation troubleshooter to reactivate it. Played 6hrs of co-op Total war:Warhammer with my son and the system is running smooth as butter. Picked up 8-10FPS in the benchmark too. went from 60-61fps to 70-71.

Not a single hiccup or problem with a program so far. I will update this thread if I experience any. Otherwise I say have at thee.

Edit: More info - I did not even perform the normal uninstall of previous drivers first, before adding new hardware. Shut the system down, removed old hardware, installed new, went in UEFI and set things up, including grabbing the drivers through the utility, rebooted, logged in, reactivated windows, done.

 

[mikeymikec]

Even though it generally works pretty well these days, I like to take the opportunity to cl4an install...but that's just personal preference.

+1

Nothing like wasting time with a niggling OS issue due to drivers even though it looks like suspect hardware.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

+1

Nothing like wasting time with a niggling OS issue due to drivers even though it looks like suspect hardware.

I will let you know if I hit any Mikey, but so far smooth sailing.

 

[mikeymikec]

I will let you know if I hit any Mikey, but so far smooth sailing.

To elaborate, I don't mean "expect to have niggling issues after platform changes if you keep the same OS install", I meant that if one has niggling issues then at least a clean install rules out one possibility that would be a pain to track down. Those niggling issues might end up having nothing to do with the re-used OS configuration.

I made a mistake on a customer's computer the other day which revealed something interesting and relevant to my point:
I did a clean install of Win7 on the computer (laptop) with an SSD some years ago. I installed all appropriate drivers for that circumstance (so likely Intel chipset software + IRST). Later, the customer took advantage of the in-place upgrade to Win10. A year or two later, I see the computer again and notice that Win10 has not been optimising the SSD at all and refuses to do it. The storage driver is still the Intel 2010 one. The mistake I then made was to tell Windows to completely uninstall that driver from Device Manager. It does so then BSOD's on reboot (INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE). Startup Repair didn't fix it (partly thanks to Win10 disabling System Restore for 128GB SSDs), bootrec /scanos doesn't want to know even though the Windows partition is accessible, and the storahci driver was actually enabled in the host registry (so it wasn't that old chestnut being the problem), and through pure luck (IMO, I don't understand why this even worked), I got the computer to restart in safe mode. It was using an Intel 2009 storage driver (not the one that I originally saw, it looked like a result of the original Intel chipset software installation). I then did what I should have done in the first place and told Device Manager to switch to the generic MS AHCI driver, rebooted, all good and Windows could optimise the drive again.

So in a platform change scenario that computer would have an AHCI driver that would cause it to BSOD, and AHCI driver that Win10 can't do TRIM with, the generic AHCI driver and perhaps the 'new platform' AHCI driver too. All it needs is for one of those drivers to have made some registry change when they were originally installed that the new driver doesn't like (perhaps a workaround hack for a known problem with Windows and that chipset on the original platform), then the user has problems.

And no, I'm not trying to convince you in particular to delete an apparently working OS configuration and clean-install it "just in case", just explaining my logic for my original opinion.

 

[shabby]

Back in the day all you used to do was to delete the ide drivers and all was good, no idea how win10 would handle this situation now.