What will my experience be?

[Markbnj]

Hi guys. I have Vista Ultimate (MSDN licensed developer copy) on my primary development box, and had a mainboard failure last Friday. After various diagnostic steps I ordered a new motherboard and processor, which will be arrriving this afternoon.

I haven't done a motherboard swap with Vista. When I did it with XP my process was to uninstall all the peripheral device drivers and then shut down, swap the hardware, restart and let XP do its thing. Always worked well.

In this case since the system went down unexpectedly I did not have a chance to prepare. So I will just be waking it back up with new furniture on the ground floor. Any tips? Has anyone been through something similar?

 

[Philippart]

I've changed motherboards on vista a few times without changing anything before, it worked flawlessly.

A safer way would of course be to uninstall all motherboard related stuff, but that's impossible is your case.

I think it's especially easy when you're switching while keeping the same brand northbridge (amd-amd, intel-intel, nvidia-nvidia)

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Philippart
I've changed motherboards on vista a few times without changing anything before, it worked flawlessly.

A safer way would of course be to uninstall all motherboard related stuff, but that's impossible is your case.

I think it's especially easy when you're switching while keeping the same brand northbridge (amd-amd, intel-intel, nvidia-nvidia)

Oh good... because I'm changing from nForce 4 to Intel, and from an AMD architecture proc to Intel. Guess I will keep my fingers crossed. Your experience gives me some hope.

 

[Billb2]

No, Ii'd bet a dime to a dollar that that switch is way to big.
A Vista repair install is in order here.

 

[Blazer]

repair install before 1st boot for sure, amd to intel will surely have some conflicts.

 

[Beanie46]

And I'm betting that you really won't have any problems. I moved an XP install from an Nforce 4 board to an Intel 975 board without an issue. Just had to make sure I had the new board's driver disc handy is all. And if XP was "smart" enough to make that change, Vista shouldn't have any problems simply booting up and have it start looking for appropriate drivers for the newly found hardware, hence make sure you have your new mb's driver disc in your DVD/CD drive. It'll probably reboot a time or two and then settle right in without problems......and no having to do the repair dance once.

And in your case, it's about all you can do. What's the worst that can happen? Have it not find the mb drivers? That's about all. It's not like it won't boot....it will.

 

[Markbnj]

Looks like the optimists win . Hardware went in with no problems, posted and booted Vista at the first power-on. Of course the operating system was mightily confused at its new surroundings, and it took numerous restarts and driver installs to get everything back in place, but all in all smoother than I had expected.

Thanks for the help and advice, all.

 

[RebateMonger]

The biggest issue is always the disk controller. Vista is supposed to have "dissimilar hardware restore" capabilities, but will only do so automatically if there are drivers built into Vista for the new disk controller. If not, there's still a possibility of feeding it the new drivers during the migration process, but I haven't done so successfully yet.

There are, of course, backup software that handles these migrations very well. Acronis' and StorageCraft's backup software have this ability. But in the case of a motherboard failure, you'd have to make the backups in advance of the failure.

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
The biggest issue is always the disk controller. Vista is supposed to have "dissimilar hardware restore" capabilities, but will only do so automatically if there are drivers built into Vista for the new disk controller. If not, there's still a possibility of feeding it the new drivers during the migration process, but I haven't done so successfully yet.

Never had problem changing mainboards in vista as long as the SATA controller was similar. Moving between intel southbridge ICH9 to ICH10 and vice versa worked without any issues. Going to ICH7 or from ICH7 always gave me a BSOD.

Also have moved Vista successfully from nforce4 to a p35/ICH9 based mainboard without it BSOD on me just recently. (or it could of been G31/ICH7)

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: F1shF4t

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
The biggest issue is always the disk controller. Vista is supposed to have "dissimilar hardware restore" capabilities, but will only do so automatically if there are drivers built into Vista for the new disk controller. If not, there's still a possibility of feeding it the new drivers during the migration process, but I haven't done so successfully yet.

Never had problem changing mainboards in vista as long as the SATA controller was similar. Moving between intel southbridge ICH9 to ICH10 and vice versa worked without any issues. Going to ICH7 or from ICH7 always gave me a BSOD.

Also have moved Vista successfully from nforce4 to a p35/ICH9 based mainboard without it BSOD on me just recently. (or it could of been G31/ICH7)

Yeah it definitely helped that the disk came up first time, so I didn't have to fart around with any boot-time driver installation. I was fairly impressed at how well the system handled the transition.

I had one wierd error: Digital Cable registration application has stopped working. Was getting this on every reboot until I found a forum post about deleting the contents of a hidden DRM folder. That cured it. The system also popped activation - no surprise there - but it activated online with no issues, perhaps because it is a developer license key.

 

[Absolution75]

You don't need to do a clean install, just uninstall all your device drivers that weren't already included in windows, everything will have to be reinstalled (by the OS) anyway.

People that say you need to do a clean install/repair are in most cases wrong. Try to boot up first, I've never had a problem moving an OS to new hardware via the above steps (went a few times from nForce 4 to P45 and nForce 4 to nForce 6 etc).

 

[Markbnj]

I had a couple of additional problems left over from the motherboard replacement. First time I played a game the system BSOD'd on nvlddmkm.sys. When I had restarted the machine for the first time the nVidia drivers had disappeared and been replaced by the standard VGA driver. I was not able to uinstall them, so I grabbed the latest drivers and installed those. I believe the BSOD was due to an incomplete removal of the previous drivers. After doing an uninstall/reinstall of the latest drivers I was able to play for a couple of hours, so I hope that one is solved.

We use CheckPoint SecurRemote for VPN access at work, and it really didn't like my changing the motherboard (specifically, I assume, the LAN port). Had to reinstall that three times before I finally got it going.

Also, lots more popping and scratching from my Audigy 4 Pro than I had before. I wasn't initially able to get the MIC/LINE-IN 1 channel working (we use Skype heavily). But resolved that by disabling the on-board Realtek chip in the BIOS, and reinstalling the Creative drivers.

Hopefully that's it and otherwise it looks like the system will be stable enough to carry me over to Win7-64 in a couple of weeks.

 

[Markbnj]

Guess I have to swing this one back over to the pessimists, or at least it's a split decision. Vista did boot and run successfully, but I continue to have issues with BSODs while playing games, and issues with the Atheros ethernet drivers. After trying Driver Sweeper and CCCleaner, and multiple restarts and reinstalls of the drivers, I am getting ready to do a fresh install of Windows 7.

 

[Blazer]

save yourself some time and frustration, move whats needed, completely wipe the drive and do a clean install.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Absolution75
You don't need to do a clean install, just uninstall all your device drivers that weren't already included in windows, everything will have to be reinstalled (by the OS) anyway.

But that's tough to do when, as in the O.P.'s case, the original motherboard has failed and Windows won't boot on the new motherboard.

Originally posted by: Markbnj
Guess I have to swing this one back over to the pessimists, or at least it's a split decision. Vista did boot and run successfully, but I continue to have issues with BSODs while playing games, and issues with the Atheros ethernet drivers. After trying Driver Sweeper and CCCleaner, and multiple restarts and reinstalls of the drivers, I am getting ready to do a fresh install of Windows 7.

Sucks. Sorry it didn't work out.

 

[Kenmitch]

You could always try the show hidden device trick and deleat all the leftovers from the original install and see if it works....Google is your buddy

A clean install is always the best way to go for me tho.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Kenmitch
You could always try the show hidden device trick and deleat all the leftovers from the original install and see if it works....Google is your buddy

A clean install is always the best way to go for me tho.

Yeah, I did that. I think the culprit here was the NVidia drivers. When the motherboard failed I had 185.something installed. When the system came up on the new motherboard it had switched the drivers to standard VGA, and I couldn't even find the nVidia drivers in the add/remove programs cpanel applet. So they never got uninstalled. When I installed the latest drivers things worked fine in the desktop but blew up pretty fast when I booted up AION (BSOD, nvddlmkm.dll). I tried a number of approaches as mentioned above, to get the drivers cleaned off so I could get a clean install, but at the same time I was having issues with the Atheros drivers and the Checkpoint VPN. It just got to the point where I thought the pain of a reinstall < pain of continuing.

Put Windows 7/64 on last night, and that was its own odyssey, from DVD drive firmware updates to complaints from the system about the behavior of the Creative Audigy drivers. But now it appears to be up and stable. Now if I can just find a way to get my Snapstream Firefly remote working.