Changing the mobo. Easiest way to avoid reinstalling Windows?

LGabrielPhoto

LGabrielPhoto

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Hello!
So I am changing the Mobo but due to the insane amount of stuff I have and time consuming config, I want to avoid reinstalling. I was thinking of just uninstalling all drivers for the mobo and then installing the new one (both based on X58 chipset).
If only there was an app like Titanium Back Up (android) for PC but I dont know about one. :D

Any info will be welcomed.
Thanks!
 
Clonezilla
Acronis

There are a few others out there.

Since they are the same chipset the only thing you really have to worry about are RAID drivers if you are using RAID. If your not, pretty straight forward.
 
No Raid so that is good news. I was worried about using Image or Cloning as I dont want to copy drivers etc but the again, if I am going to be cloning, what is the difference from just connecting the hard drives and booting up with the existing config? Just trying to understand this. Thanks! :)
 
After you swap out the mobo, use the nonpresent devices switch for dev mgmt. and remove the non present devices and you should be fine,
 
if you're no the same mobo chipset then you're not going to have any issues just swapping them out. of course you'll just need to install the new drivers.
 
Windows 7 is very good at booting up and finding the new hardware with major hardware changes.
I've done it on my main rig 3 times now, 3 times on my brothers machine and on a bunch of other machines.
Mine is still running my original install from August 2009. Went from a Q6600, to these, i7 870, i7 2600K , i7 3770k
My brother went from AMD to Intel with no issues either.

Back in the XP days, I would run Sysprep to remove the drivers and upon bootup, windows would do a mini setup to get it back up and running, worked great on systems that were still functioning.
if the mobo died, then it was a gamble if windows would boot back up with a new mobo.
 
Zepher is right, ever since 7 you should have minimal issues doing wholesale motherboard swaps - even to completely different chipsets. I for example went from a VIA chipset to an Intel one and had 0 issues in Windows 8. It was plug and play.
 
Since both mobos are X58 based there is no problem just swapping them. Windows 7 and up are much more forgiving when changing chipsets. About the only thing you need to check is for AHCI and that's about it.

Windows will install any drivers (or promt for them) upon restart.

If you want to play it safe, uninstall drivers and sysprep. But this really shouldn't be necessary.
 
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