Do you need to reinstall vista if replacing motherboard?

traveller

Hi, my son is getting his motherboard replaced and is wondering whether he will have to get all his programmes, such as vista ect,reinstalled? Will all of the memory be wiped? Sorry , not very technically minded here:o .Thanks.

amcluesent

Depends if the mobo is being swapped for the same make/model.

If not, Vista will need to be Repaired by booting from the DVD-ROM so that Vista gets reconfigured to run on the new hardware. Installed applications and data should survive a repair(*)

(*) Obviously if PC World are doing it, everything will get trashed.

Wonko_2

If it's just a motherboard change, then everything on the hard drive will be intact, so no the memory will not be wiped.
If it's an OEM copy of Vista, you will probably need to re-register it with MS. This is because the OEM license is intended for use on a specific PC and it keeps track of the hardware it's working on. Can be done by phone (0800 number!)

DaveC

traveller

Thanks for your replies. So should we expect the machine back how we got it once it's switched on, or will we, more than likely how to do anything, IYSWIM? Thanks.

robredz

You may be lucky and vista will boot but as has been said above you may need to re-activate You may have to re-install, but as per amclusent's post PC world would vape the hard drive anyway whether it needed to or not, so if the PC is operational back up the data in case a reformat is required. Just reinstalling windows into the same directory is not recommended if the motherboard has a different chipset.

Unstoppable_2

traveller wrote: »

Thanks for your replies. So should we expect the machine back how we got it once it's switched on, or will we, more than likely how to do anything, IYSWIM? Thanks.

The last time I did a motherboard swap was the ultimate test. Went from Athlon XP 2000+ on SiS chipset motherboard to Intel Core 2 Duo on a P45.

Basically, took a while to start and then sat there for a fair bit detecting the new hardware. First time I logged into it, I had to use keyboard shortcuts whilst it detected the USB controllers so it could install the mouse. After reboot it was running OK although in basic graphics. From there, it was just a case of installing drivers for motherboard, network, sound and graphics as they were all different.

It then popped up that it had detected hardware changes and that it needed reactivating.