New MB/CPU; do I have to reinstall Win7?

[guppie]

I'm upgrading my Mobo/CPU to a MSI Z77 based MB and Intel i5-3570k CPU. I'm keeping all of my other hardware (RAM, SSD, GPU) and I really don't want to go through the hassle of a reinstall! I have a bunch of games and programs and especially my wireless printer/scanner is running flawlessly and all my Outlook programs with custom settings... Ugh!?!?!

What do I need to do to make this transition seamless? I have a few spare drives that I can make an image just in case.

 

[c627627]

It's a good idea to make an image before updating any drivers, make an image before doing a Windows update, but especially, doing this.


In the old days, you had to have a motherboard chipset similar enough but now, chances are better that it may go through.


Be sure to *only* connect bare essentials on first boot. Just the one hard drive, and no peripherals whatsoever, no extra cards in - nothing other than bare minimum needed to try to boot in. Good luck.

 

[guppie]

Do I need to go into the Device Manager settings and uninstall everything? Or certain things??

 

[c627627]

Before disconnecting?

I don't think that'll make a difference. Just make sure as few things as possible are connected to motherboard upon initial boot.

Use the same single video card, no other cards and nothing connected except for keyboard and mouse. If you get in, I would make a plan to image as I add things. It always helps to have a relatively small OS partition and install large apps/games on another partition. It makes imaging quicker. But that's something to think about if ever you install from scratch in the future. It takes me a couple of minutes to nuke my OS and reimage it. (Quicker than a bathroom break) And I have a multi-boot so I simply image from one OS to another.

 

[guppie]

Just to follow up. I made a backup image as a failsafe, but I didn't need to rely on it just yet...

All I did was drop the SSD into the new MB/CPU/RAM rig and then updated the drivers manually from the CD on all the items in the Device Manager that had the yellow exclamation mark. There was one thing called the SM Bus Controller that wouldn't auto detect so I installed MSI LiveUpdate5 and ran it make sure I had the most current MB drivers (USB 3.0, INF, Audio) and updated them accordingly. After a few downloads and reboots in between each update, everything seems to be running smoothly. I'll be the first to admit it, but Microsoft has made a pretty damn solid OS with Win7.

I'll post back after a few weeks have passed and I've played some games, edited videos, etc...

Thanks for the help!