Comments on: Upgrade Your Motherboard Without Reinstalling your OS

By: Brent Fox

Brent Fox — Thu, 17 May 2012 01:42:02 +0000

Thank you! I am so excited this went off without a hitch. The only thing I needed to fix was the boot order of my harddrives (something I should have thought of before switching mobos)

By: Scottie

Scottie — Sat, 12 May 2012 09:37:27 +0000

Hmm, well… It would be handy to know what 5 beeps refers to. Sometimes motherboards have a certain number of beeps for a certain hardware failure. But in any case, I would try removing 1 or more of the memory modules and trying to boot the old machine in case it’s a RAM problem. Then, you could remove any PCI/PCI-E cards installed and see if that helps, including swapping out the graphics card if you have a spare. If none of that works, and you don’t want to reinstall, I would probably do an “install-over” on the new machine where you don’t format the drive, but just let Windows install over the old version. You’d have to reinstall all your apps, but at least your files would remain intact.

By: johnny boy

johnny boy — Fri, 11 May 2012 01:20:30 +0000

Hi Scott, here’s one for you. the mainboard on my PC gave up i was just getting 5 bleeps when i turn it on so i cant change the ide drivers to the windows default universal ones you suggested. i have a new board with all the inf drivers is there any way of starting my new hardware without re-installing w7 if thats not a challange i dont know what is LOL. best regards, johnny boy

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:55:27 +0000

This is awesome, you have no idea how much time you just saved me.

By: Scottie

Scottie — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:53:41 +0000

Ah! Yeah, that would do it. I’ve never done an upgrade like this involving RAID.

By: PaulB

PaulB — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:20:08 +0000

Thanks for the reply. I think it’s probably because it’s a RAID controller?? Anyway, I gave up and just re-installed from scratch – sometimes the long way round is quickest!
I’ve bookmarked this page though, as I’m sure it’ll come in handy soon!

By: Scottie

Scottie — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:04:21 +0000

Okay, so that is a REALLY cool utility – built in to Windows, no less. Thanks for the info!!

By: Bob Sanders

Bob Sanders — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 11:58:32 +0000

I never got to troubleshooting further as I found this website and it worked like a champ:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html#post1161038

I have used sysprep in the past to prepare seven identical computers in our seniors lab but never realized it could be re-called after the system was up and running. I generalized my desktop computer and shut down, then made an image of it and installed the image on my laptop. It worked as advertised and I didn’t have to change any other drivers as Windows did it for me.

Thanks for your assistance.

By: Scottie

Scottie — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:50:28 +0000

In the Update Driver Software window, uncheck the “Show Compatible Hardware” checkbox. Then “Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller” should appear in the left column entitled “Manufacturer”. It should always be there, since this is the default Windows driver. If it’s not, I’m not sure how to get it back!

By: PaulB

PaulB — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:13:17 +0000

This looked really promising for me, but I can’t find the ‘standard’ SATA driver. I can only find a list of Intel drivers specific to the old onboard controller. I assume I should be looking under ‘Storage Controllers’ in Device Manager? Do I need to download the ‘standard’ driver from somewhere (I can’t find anything in the system32 folder). I’m using Windows 7 by the way.
(sorry if I posted this twice, not sure if it worked the first time)