windows 7 question...

wol-va-rine

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I have an Asrock 775Dual-VSTA that's running XP and is on it's last legs in the kids' system, I know that if I try to switch the hdd to an Asus P5W DH Deluxe it won't boot (or will BSOD shortly thereafter if it does manage to boot), but could I slip in a windows 7 disc and upgrade the XP to windows 7 without issue...? or would I just have to wipe the drive and start over...?
 
Windows 7 comes with the upgrade feature. It gives you the option to keep all your programs and documents :)
 
thanks fellas, I was asking because of the chipset differences, I know the hdd won't boot up regularly but was wondering if I could fool it by upgrading, how about upgrading to Vista and then to windows 7...? my son has some game save information that he wants to keep (COD4 and 5), if I do a clean install of the OS he'll have to start over, or would he have to start over anyway even if an upgrade to windows 7 was allowed...?
 
You could always back up the game save folders and then transfer them to the new OS and game installs.

You can use this method of transferring the drive to a new system: Swapping your board without so much as a reinstall
The first thing to do is ensure Windows is in a state where it can work on the new system. In the case of 2000 and XP, this just means that it has to be able to access the hard drives.

To do this, replace the Bus Master drivers with standard generic drivers, as seen below. The drivers you need to be working on are found in Device Manager under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers". Ignore the Primary and Secondary, go for the other one. nForce users will only see one entry per controller.

mobofigure1.png


If you're changing chipset (think in terms of drivers - Drivers for the VIA KT133 work fine with a KT400, but drivers for i815 won't work at all with an AMD760MPX), then you'll want to knock out the AGP drivers too to avoid video problems after the switch. Either uninstall them from the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs or, in the case of VIA's 4in1, from the driver installation program. If you have neither (ie. SiS, ALi) or just can't be bothered, then observe the illustration below.

mobofigure2.png


The standard PCI to PCI bridge disables everything AGP, but also makes sure that old AGP drivers aren't around to screw your system up.

You should be good to go now, but it's worth it to do some more cleaning up. Remove both USB controllers (don't do this if you have a USB keyboard/mouse, duh) and uninstall your display drivers. Also uninstall any other non-critical drivers from the Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, or any other option your driver installer has. They'll need to be reinstalled anyway, since Windows has to reinstall devices if they change INT# lines and they will.

I've used this method a few times with great success.
 
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