What are the things you should do after a motherboard change?

[op00iuy]

I recently had to change my motherboard because of hardware failure. Fortuanately, its of the same company, so not much headache there.

My question is that what should I do now after the motherboard is changed. My PC is taking a little longer to boot. I wonder if it still is holding the drivers of the previous motherboard in memory.

Should I sysprep my Windows installation? Should I uninstall the drivers from the previous motherboard? It will be really hard since I don't know which of them are needed. i have a whole bunch of them in the installed list.

What are the things I can do on the OS side to make this transition a little smoother.

 

[Barman58]

I would personally look at a fresh install, I know this is a major step but at least you should have a setup that is less likely to fail due to a driver issue. I am assuming that you have access to the correct drivers for the current [New] motherboard I would make a USB pen drive with these on, for future needs, and reinstall fresh which will give you a much better install

One issue you may have, is the licence, if this is a type of OEM licence then it is likely to fail due to the major hardware change This would be more likely if the Windows was supplied with the original equipment, as the key is normally held in a chip on the motherboard - If this happens use the option to speak to Microsoft and explain exactly what and why you did the change and they should re-licence the hardware for Windows, they do not often have an issue to an honest change like yours.

 

[op00iuy]

I would personally look at a fresh install, I know this is a major step but at least you should have a setup that is less likely to fail due to a driver issue. I am assuming that you have access to the correct drivers for the current [New] motherboard I would make a USB pen drive with these on, for future needs, and reinstall fresh which will give you a much better install

One issue you may have, is the licence, if this is a type of OEM licence then it is likely to fail due to the major hardware change This would be more likely if the Windows was supplied with the original equipment, as the key is normally held in a chip on the motherboard - If this happens use the option to speak to Microsoft and explain exactly what and why you did the change and they should re-licence the hardware for Windows, they do not often have an issue to an honest change like yours.

How do I backup my data? I mean I want the exact same desktop and its contents and my exact same preferences. Is that possible with a fresh install somehow?

 

[Barman58]

It may be, or some other workaround, do you have access to an external drive or a an internal to make images to? this should allow you to make a copy of your install, remove the 3rd party drivers from the copy and then use the "cleaned copy to install your system and allow the new motherboard drivers to be added.

Our Member @Kari is an advanced user of this kind of restoration so I have invited him to take a look at this thread and see what he suggests

 

[RolandJS]

Have you discovered what are the things slowing down the computer boot and load? jv16 Power Tools has a module that will monitor and report on your windows load to desktop time; I have not used it extensively, I cannot report on what it reports and how it reports. I mention jv16PT just to give one example, there are other utilities out there.

 

[mrjimphelps]

My PC is taking a little longer to boot.

If that is the only problem, then it's possible that the new motherboard has a bad firmware version installed. See if you can back down to an older version of the firmware. If you can't back down to an older firmware version, try a newer version if available.

Another possibility is a bad driver. Go into Device Manager and see if any of the devices listed have the yellow triangle next to them. If so, then do an update on that driver. If none of them are showing as bad, then do a reinstall of your chipset driver, to see if that fixes the problem.