Comments on: Upgrade Your Motherboard Without Reinstalling your OS

By: Paul Spraglin

Paul Spraglin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:42:41 +0000

I am currently running an AM2+ mobo (770 chipset), Athlon 5000+ cpu with 4GB ram. My new Gigabyte AMD 970 mobo will be here in a day or two and will be installing an Phenom II X4 960T cpu and 8 or 16GB ram. I mainly just want my data (pics, music, etc..) saved. I’ll be trying your process in a few days. I’ll probably be doing some backing-up to be on the safe side though. Thanks for the info and will keep you posted.

By: will

will — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:24:38 +0000

you are a champion!! thankyou so much for posting this guide – saved me a lot of work

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:59:55 +0000

I cannot believe this actually worked! I just built a new system (Asus Crosshair V Formula mobo, AMD FX 8150 8 core CPU, 16 gig DDR3 RAM…). My old system (gateway mobo with AMD phenom x4 9100e with 6 gig of DDR2 ram) died but the data in my two hard drives were still intact. I did as the instructions described but I got a BSOD on my new pc (with the old hard drives). I checked the CMOS on my new computer and changed the SATA to IDE and it worked!! Even though my old hard drives are sata, they worked as IDE in CMOS. I am now running my new computer with all my data intact!! Thanks and I will definitely remember these steps when I have to upgrade my wife’s computer.

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:23:45 +0000

Looks like im the unfortunate sod that was in the 1% this didnt work for -_-

By: Jose

Jose — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:04:24 +0000

Hey Scottie. I just finished booting up my vista x64 based system after installing new cpu,motherboard and ram with my old hard drive ( 1st timer doing all this). Thats why I came here to leave you a comment. It worked with no problems!I have all my programs, games data etc. I had a Gateway Lx6200 ddr2 system and the motherboard died. I called a computer repair guy cause i thought it was something else. An hour later after we found the problem and I told him it was ok cause i was upgrading anyways he told me to take it to the shop we will put it together for you clone the hard drive or copy your data get you a new os it will cost you so and so much, no thank you. Put it together myself, followed your steps and I have a nice new ddr3 setup. Moved from the stock gateway lx6200 (except video card and psu) to a gigabyte z68, i5 2500k, corsair vengance 8gb ddr3 and thermaltake armor a60 case. Thanks for the help!

By: Scottie

Scottie — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 19:58:36 +0000

Sorry for the late reply… Nope, I don’t think you’re missing anything. The master boot record on disk 0 will still point to the same Win 7 partition on disk 1, so all should be well.

There IS a way to have only Disk 1 with Win 7 on it, but it involves using the command “fixmbr” (I think it is…) from the recovery console, which you’d probably have to get to by booting from the Win 7 DVD. That’s a pretty hairy proposition if you don’t really know what you’re doing though, and I admit I don’t. I’ve done stuff like that with XP before, but never Vista or Win 7.

By: Allen

Allen — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:12:37 +0000

I will be installing my new P8P67 pro replacing my P5QL-pro in a day or more

Windows 7 (upgrade, bought the box at Futureshop) is on partition D: of disk 1, Vista is on partition C: of disk 0. I never use the Vista anymore but am keeping it there because it seems wedded to the upgrade;
When I temporarily unplug disk 0 I cannot boot so that is where the boot record must be (??)

SO before changing MOBO I will make sure the SATA port numbers follow the same disk numbers thru BIOS and common sense.

IDE Controllers are standard OK already checked.

Am I missing anything?

By: echo

echo — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:21:37 +0000

@Scottie ok sorry, thanks for the help now i just gotta wait for my motherboard to arrive

By: echo

echo — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 08:17:14 +0000

Ok thanks a lot now I just gotta wait for my motherboard to arrive

By: Scottie

Scottie — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 07:48:00 +0000

I describe the steps in Steps 1-5 in the article.