The Glade 4.0

Hey guys, I got a question.

I'm looking to upgrade my MB/CPU, but I was wondering about my HD/OS. Would I need to reinstall vista, or reformat? Just trying to figure out what all I'd have to do. Currently I have an AMD MB/CPU, and was told that if I got AMD stuff again I might not have to, but they were not certain.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It is very unlikely that you will be able to upgrade without reinstalling your OS. I've seen it in very rare cases, but generally, the mainboard's chipset has changed enough that windows gets angry.

Yeah, I've seen OS's that have survived drastic hardware changes like that. But it isn't pretty. It's never done cleanly. Usually the best case scenarios that I've seen are ones that looked like they accepted the change just fine but over time they developed.... issues.

Although, I should amend that OS's that don't survive drastic hardware changes are *ones that gamers use.* I know Linux, for instance, has a lot less trouble. But, I am a gamer therefore I don't touch Linux unless I have to (for work related purposes).

I personally always do a clean installation of an OS after a motherboard change. If it's just a CPU or RAM change it's not as bad.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I've changed out the mobo on two different machines with XP without every having issues.

*shrug*

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The Dude abides.

Do some web searching for sysprep, and run it. Should be able to find some Vista sysprep tutorials that will make it pretty pain-free. It'll strip down the hardware configuration portion of the registry, and rebuild it as if it were starting for the first time, with all your programs and data intact.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I succesfully did this, but the upgrade I made was the same brand of motherboard and in the same chipset family.

I don't recommend it, even if you are able to get it working, you are likely to experience issues.

If you absolutely must do this, then I concur with Kaffis. Sysprep is the way to go. The newer versions of it are able to "clone" a machine to dissimilar hardware (different HAL, different mass storage controller, etc.). Sysprep your current machine and then either move the hard drive into the new machine (or image copy the old hard drive to the one in the new machine as the case may be).

That said, it's been a looong time since I've used sysprep for this sort of thing. I don't remember the exact process, and I've never done it with Vista in any case. I'm pretty sure that you need the drivers for the new motherboard's mass storage (IDE or SCSI) controller available to the old system when you run sysprep. Otherwise when you try to start the system with the new motherboard, it will BSOD out during boot up with INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. If the storage controller on the new motherboard is one that Vista will already detect and use without downloading drivers from the Mfr., then there's no issue. But if it's a controller that was released after the most recent service pack for Vista, that may not be the case. There's a process for making 3rd party drivers part of your sysprep image, but like I said -- it's been too long for me to remember exactly what it is.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

With Vista it's not likely to be a problem, Stathol -- most current storage controllers are compatible with Vista's generic. With AHCI and XP, though, this is a problem if you're not preserving the same storage controller (usually by replacing with the same chipset), as AHCI post-dates XP and thus there isn't native generic driver support.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades