Replacement mo-bo - how will Win7 respon?

[BionicJohn]

I've had a lot trouble with my Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mother board, which I've had for about 3 years.

The POST now frequently fails to recognise the two hard disk drives and two the DVD-RAM drives.

I have replaced the SATA and IDE cables, and even one of the hard drives, but the problem persists.

I have now sourced - as far as I can see - an identical motherboard. All the numbers match up. So I am now going to take the old mo-bo out and replace it with new one. All the other components remain the same - Processor, RAM, Graphics card, drives and so on.

Will the PC boot up, sort itself out and continue as nothing has happened?
Or, will I need to re-install drivers and trigger a re-activation?

I'm sure I can cope with what happens, but I'm not sure whether is going to take a couple of hours or be something of a marathon.

Many thanks,
John.

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[xit]

If you found an identical board, your good to go, it should boot right up. Your also lucky to find a board that has been out 3 years. Good luck

 

[rclarke250]

Well, I know, my windows 7 ultimate, when I went from a gigabyte p35,core 2 duo, msi nvidia 260 gtx, 4 Gb ddr2 to Asrock p4 extreme, I5-2500K, 8 GB ddr3, msi 460 GTX last year, I didn't have to do anything but click the button to re-activate windows. Same with my wife's computer.

 

[BionicJohn]

That's re-assuring; thanks!

Hopefully it'll be a straightforward job at the weekend.

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[BadBigBen]

If you run into caveats, you know where to come for assistance, I am quite sure that someone will be able to answer any of your questions...

hope that all will go smooth...


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[jlockley]

You should have no problems, at least if is not an oem product delivered with a branded computer. Don't worry about the same, just get a good one. Microsoft might not want to accept the new environment, but you will be provided with a verification phone number or you can activate the system manually. I've been futzing around with W7 Pro on a changing arrangement of drives and memory (no board yet) trying to optimize one system, and it has been a lot more docile than either XP or Vista, to my delight.

More information:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...computer/8147edcd-c460-4436-b8d6-7806b031af1e

 

[BionicJohn]

My version of Win7 is an upgrade.

The system has failed a couple of times because of this HDD issue, forcing re-installations of Win7 and I've had no trouble re-activating - it does it automatically when the network/internet is connected.

Hopefully all will be well.

I'll let you know what happens - and will shout for help if needed!

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[Nelviticus]

One minor caveat - if your new motherboard has an older BIOS than the one you're changing out, there is an extremely small chance you'll have problems booting. Before you start I'd therefore download the latest BIOS from the Gigabyte site and chuck it on a floppy (or a USB stick if the board supports updating BIOS from USB). Just to be sure.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[BionicJohn]

I'll check that - thanks.

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[BionicJohn]

All went well, and I cleared out a lot of dust!

The fiddliest parts refitting the giant heatsink and fan and making sure the Power, Reset, Speaker, connectors were all on the correct pins.

At the first boot up there were lots of beeps, but reseating all the RAM and cards, and giving the processor/heatsink a nudge sorted all that. The board is the same as the old one, Win7 didn't take long to load up (there a couple of massages about installing drivers) and the only adjustment I had to make was to the clock.

A non-event really…

Thanks for tuning in!

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[Nelviticus]

Did you apply new thermal paste when re-fitting the heatsink? If not your processor will probably fry at some point. If you don't have any you can get it from most computer retailers for about a tenner.

Nelviticus

 

[BionicJohn]

Did you apply new thermal paste when re-fitting the heatsink?

Yes, just a smear.

I've been checking the core temps and they're fine.

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.