Different motherboard, same Win 7 installation?

[J2T]

It appears my motherboard has up and took a dump on me. Win 7 bluescreened and then crashed on me last night. Startup repair can't solve the issue, so I get stuck in an infinite loop of startup repair making an attempt to repair but failing. Event name is StartupRepairOffline and all the searching I have done seems to point to the motherboard. This machine has been randomly blue screening for a while and probably my fault for not acting on it sooner.

So in short, I have attempted to find the identical board (Gigabyte 790XTA-UD4) to do a swap but have had no luck. What are my chances of grabbing say a 990FX or 990X board and being able to do a swap and getting into Win 7? This is the main family PC and has all the emails, pictures, etc on it.

 

[mondena]

Most of the time if you put a different motherboard in, you need to re-install windows. Sometimes, in my experience, maybe 25% of the time it will work without a re-install. Personally i like a clean install with a new motherboard. So if you don't want to re-install windows, i'd recommend getting the same board.

 

[mondena]

AMD lists this site with them:
http://shop.amd.com/us/All/Detail/Motherboard/GA-790XTA-UD4#ComparePrices

I couldn't really find any stores on google, but on bing i found this one:
http://www.amamax.com/gigamdam379d.html

 

[J2T]

Damn, for those prices I'm better off just getting a 990FX board and trying it. My main concern is getting all my files off.

 

[EarthDog]

You can try it. I have been very successful in switching motherboards (FAR greater than 25%, more like 80%) with the same chipsets. If it is a different chipset, it still should work (again done that before with intel), but you will have to install the proper drivers.

It is best to reinstall windows however.

Why dont you try reinstalling windows anyway? I doubt its the mobo.

 

[manu2b]

I swapped boards and cpu's two days ago: from 955be/790xt to fx-8120/970. I installed the drivers pack enclosed with the mobo and everything went juste fine. I put the PhII back info the new bord, still flawless.

 

[mondena]

You can try it. I have been very successful in switching motherboards (FAR greater than 25%, more like 80%) with the same chipsets. If it is a different chipset, it still should work (again done that before with intel), but you will have to install the proper drivers.

It is best to reinstall windows however.

Why dont you try reinstalling windows anyway? I doubt its the mobo.

Yes, i agree with the same chipset it is much higher than 25%. I just meant 25%, as when i am doing repairs on systems, and just grabbing a hard drive to get windows on for testing something, so windows is coming from a completely unrelated machine, i'd say about 25% of the time it works.

But yes, if it is intel-intel, or amd-amd, and especially if it is the same chipset the odds are much higher.

You shouldn't have any problems getting files off. If you re-install windows you don't have to format the drive, windows will just make a windows.old folder with your old stuff. If you can, i would recommend just putting the hard drive in another system and taking an image of it first, i use acronis, but there are other options as well. Then you are 100% sure you don't lose anything.

 

[J2T]

You can try it. I have been very successful in switching motherboards (FAR greater than 25%, more like 80%) with the same chipsets. If it is a different chipset, it still should work (again done that before with intel), but you will have to install the proper drivers.

It is best to reinstall windows however.

Why dont you try reinstalling windows anyway? I doubt its the mobo.

Well part of the reason why I do think it is the mobo is because it has done some odd things since I got it. Sometimes when I would shut it down, it wouldn't power back on until I flipped the switch on the PSU off and then on (tried 2 different PSUs) before it would start up again. Its random but would happen periodically. Not too mention that I have had two different memory kits in this board as well. I can't even log into safe mode, it does the same thing.