How to boot Vista/7 after motherboard swap?

[Stu]

This is an issue I keep coming across and I'm curious to know whether there is a solution?

Picture the following scenario: A customer brings in a Vista/7 PC suffering from motherboard failure. The only solution is to install a new one. You install a motherboard of a different chipset type to the original. Everything goes well but Windows will not boot since it is looking at drivers for a completely different board. Where do you go from here? Startup Repair is useless because it doesn't repair such errors, and you cannot do a repair install like you could with XP. You cannot do the upgrade trick since you cannot boot into Windows. Similarly you couldn't remove the drivers beforehand because the board was dead and you most definately couldn't boot into Windows then.

Short of doing a fresh install, what are my options?

 

[0gr3]

How about booting into a live CD and manually swapping out the drivers?

 

[Stu]

How about booting into a live CD and manually swapping out the drivers?

How do you manually swap out drivers? Sounds complicated.

 

[NYJimbo]

You cannot get safe mode either ?

 

[Stu]

You cannot get safe mode either ?

Nope, nothing works, automatic reboot in any mode.

 

[OnSiteSolutions]

Even if you do a parallel install on a new partition and overwrite the old driver folder with the new one, you will still have the registry entries to sort out - finding, removing, and adding the relevant entries, which are fairly undocumented for win 7, and would be more tedious than a reinstall.

Win 7 installs so quickly I wonder why you don't just do it fresh.
Are there a ton of programs on the pc?

 

[NYJimbo]

Is this a SATA or IDE ?

It might be possible to disable all IDE/SATA in the BIOS, put a generic IDE or SATA card that does not need drivers and boot the drive off that. Once its up you can then load the drivers for the new mobo and then shut down, pull the generic drive card out, switch the drive to the motherboard connectors and enable the bios.

I think I did that with IDE drives in the past.

 

[Nerm]

If you replace the board with one that has the same chipset you shouldn't have this problem.

 

[NYJimbo]

If you replace the board with one that has the same chipset you shouldn't have this problem.

Gee, ya think ?

 

[Stu]

If you replace the board with one that has the same chipset you shouldn't have this problem.

Umm, thanks.

 

[usacvlr]

Installs quickly! It took a good 45 minutes on my machine and it's a fast system.

Even if you do a parallel install on a new partition and overwrite the old driver folder with the new one, you will still have the registry entries to sort out - finding, removing, and adding the relevant entries, which are fairly undocumented for win 7, and would be more tedious than a reinstall.

Win 7 installs so quickly I wonder why you don't just do it fresh.
Are there a ton of programs on the pc?

 

[usacvlr]

This is a 'why didn't I think of that question.."

Umm, thanks.

 

[Stu]

This is a 'why didn't I think of that question.."

Actually I know full well that using a motherboard with the same (or very close) chipset would not cause the problem, but sometimes, for a variety of possible reasons, it is not always easy to get hold of a suitable replacement board. In my case, time and financial constraints led to the purchase of an Intel chipset, rather than the SiS that I needed.

 

[NYJimbo]

Actually I know full well that using a motherboard with the same (or very close) chipset would not cause the problem, but sometimes, for a variety of possible reasons, it is not always easy to get hold of a suitable replacement board. In my case, time and financial constraints led to the purchase of an Intel chipset, rather than the SiS that I needed.

What really pisses me off is that this problem is almost as old as Windows itself. The "windows team" knows this must affect TENS OF MILLIONS of people around the world every year and still we have no easy fix for it.

They can do a system restore with a one-button click but they can't come up with a way to inject a device driver or at least talk to the controller at the lowest or most rudimentary level possible. I know with an ASR recovery/restore you can put in the drivers and then restore, I do it all the time. So why the f-ck cant they do something like this with a motherboard swap. With most unix/bsd installs you could talk to an IDE drive at freaking WDMA2 mode, which is like 16mbs and at least gets you booted so you can at least work with the drivers and stuff.

For MS to still tell us something like "To avoid this problem use the same exact model of hardware" is beyond ridiculous, its insulting. Imagine how many people each day have to go through this and have been doing it for more than a decade.

I know there are alot of tweaks and tricks, heck I have a few of my own, but this shouldn't be so damn painful for 99% of the rest of the population who don't live and breath this crap every day. MS has published some hilarious 10 page fixes which only a computer engineer would attempt, but everything else to repair Windows can be done with a mouse click in a pretty GUI. I don't accept any excuse from MS about how complex this is. There must be a simple way to divert from using the installed drivers and either ask for a new one or talk to the controller in a dumbed down mode or something.

The f-cking BSOD on this one is so 1995 and shouldnt be happening anymore.

 

[mekon]

What really pisses me off is that this problem is almost as old as Windows itself. The "windows team" knows this must affect TENS OF MILLIONS of people around the world every year and still we have no easy fix for it.

They can do a system restore with a one-button click but they can't come up with a way to inject a device driver or at least talk to the controller at the lowest or most rudimentary level possible. I know with an ASR recovery/restore you can put in the drivers and then restore, I do it all the time. So why the f-ck cant they do something like this with a motherboard swap. With most unix/bsd installs you could talk to an IDE drive at freaking WDMA2 mode, which is like 16mbs and at least gets you booted so you can at least work with the drivers and stuff.

For MS to still tell us something like "To avoid this problem use the same exact model of hardware" is beyond ridiculous, its insulting. Imagine how many people each day have to go through this and have been doing it for more than a decade.

I know there are alot of tweaks and tricks, heck I have a few of my own, but this shouldn't be so damn painful for 99% of the rest of the population who don't live and breath this crap every day. MS has published some hilarious 10 page fixes which only a computer engineer would attempt, but everything else to repair Windows can be done with a mouse click in a pretty GUI. I don't accept any excuse from MS about how complex this is. There must be a simple way to divert from using the installed drivers and either ask for a new one or talk to the controller in a dumbed down mode or something.

The f-cking BSOD on this one is so 1995 and shouldnt be happening anymore.

Could not agree with you more especially as this wasn't a problem with versions of Vista prior to the RTM version, which would suggest that they have actually caused the problem as part of their licensing/activation paranoia.

 

[0gr3]

Just throwing this out there since I know realize my initial suggestion wasn't the brightest or easiest. Would it not be possible to load up a bart disc with the drivers and run the installer and point it to where ever the drivers would need to be located?

 

[Markus]

Its worth a try, replace hal.dll with a fresh copy. I have done this on XP before and it worked great. Haven't had a chance to try it with Vista or 7 yet.

 

[zfrogz]

It's usually getting stuck on the IDE driver. If the machine is at least booting before swapping the board, you can change the IDE driver back to a generic driver before swapping the board and you should be fine. If that is not possible, I have had luck with a tool on the UBCD4win called "fix ide" or "fix sata" that edits the registry to point to the generic driver.

I have also had BSOD problems taking a windows install from an Intel based machine and switching to AMD because of a service intel chipsets use called intelppm which you can delete out of the registry either before hand or after with a bootable PE disc.

 

[NYJimbo]

If that is not possible, I have had luck with a tool on the UBCD4win called "fix ide" or "fix sata" that edits the registry to point to the generic driver.

I tried them a couple times, once it worked on an IDE system but not SATA.

 

[Tweak]

I used to have some files that I'd copy to the drive for XP and almost every time without fail no problems booting into windows and loading the new drivers, for Vista or Win7 I have not seen such a solution but your post has motivated me to see if I can locate something like I once used (and do still when needed) and for sure I'll post back if I manage to locate something useful. Guess I'm saying thanks for the motivation.