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When I used to have Windows XP and upgraded the computer, I got bluescreens at boot, usually due to a changed IDE controller. How do I avoid this? I am now upgrading windows 7 to windows 7 changing the motherboard. I want to avoid bluescreens and failed boots.
unixman83
Posted 2011-04-25T01:42:26.067
Reputation: 382
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Format your hard drive and do a clean install. Operating systems aren't really designed to deal with upgrading a motherboard. Sysprep is the only way I'd consider doing it, but you could try booting into safe mode and uninstalling all devices present in Device Manager. I don't believe you can change between different HAL kernels or bootloaders, though, so if you're going from IDE to AHCI or from BIOS to UEFI you have to clean install.
Bacon Bits
Posted 2011-04-25T01:42:26.067
Reputation: 6 125
Just did a reinstall. Luckily all I need to do is: 1) Copy over the program's Users\ Profile Settings 2) Run the program's installer. Usually that's enough to get back most of the settings. – unixman83 – 2011-04-26T13:51:46.860
-1 For the format the hard drive. All versions of Windows, post 2000 support some type of repair mode installation. That does not wipe out files. – unixman83 – 2011-04-26T13:52:44.050
I find repair installs have problems which clean installs never suffer from and occasionally don't fix anything at all because of what the system tries to reuse, therefore I never recommend them. I did not say "delete your data". I assumed you'd already have backed that up when you decided to upgrade the motherboard. – Bacon Bits – 2011-04-26T17:22:55.967
That's probably why Windows 7 does not support repair installs in the traditional sense. But 7 does allow to reinstall over an existing installation, preserving the filesystem. – unixman83 – 2011-04-27T14:59:21.663