Are motherboards (some or all) OS specific

[jagoriup]

In my searching for a motherboard for a new build, I see some motherboards are listed as Windows 10 ready or supported. For example:

https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/Z170A-GAMING-M7.html#hero-overview

Is this an important thing to look for in a motherboard if you plan to run Windows 10?
Thanks for any thoughts!

 

[Colif]

Yes, it helps if there are drivers that work with Win 10 if you buy a new board now to use with win 10. It saves on headaches down the track. I am not sure I would buy a board that still supports XP now as it doesn't offer very much future usage on later OS, as most board makers only support boards for so many generations.

It also means its more likely to support all of win 10 new features as well.

 

[jagoriup]

Yes, it helps if there are drivers that work with Win 10 if you buy a new board now to use with win 10. It saves on headaches down the track. I am not sure I would buy a board that still supports XP now as it doesn't offer very much future usage on later OS, as most board makers only support boards for so many generations.

It also means its more likely to support all of win 10 new features as well.

Thanks allot! I appreciate your thoughts. Probably save me some hassle later.

 

[jones0610]

I'd like to piggy back on this question since the thread seems to have gone cold.

I have a large fleet of WinXP Pro machines that I obviously need to upgrade. My plan was to buy a very high end, very upgradeable mobo and use them as my new core. Initially upgrading the hardware and keeping it an XP system and then later upgrading each to Win10.

I built my first new system using an ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Formula mobo which is pretty much the best that's out there. On a breadboard I was unable to get a known good XP Pro HDD to boot on it. ASUS makes great products but their support doesn't seem to know much about their own products. I was never able to get past "XP is not supported". Even the user forum was not helpful in obtaining advice on how to get XP running on this mobo. Most did not understand my project plan and rather than offering ways to get this to work simply questioned WHY I would want to do this.

For the past two months this mobo bas been running Ubuntu 16.04 (also not supported by ASUS) pretty muck flawlessly.

So the basic question is: Is there a Skylake mobo (and ideally a high end mobo) that is known to run XP Pro?

I'm guessing that there is nothing about the Skylake chipset that will prevent this and it's a BIOS issue.

I very much like the ASUS ROG M8x mobo line and I also like the BIOS they use on it very much. I have a key legacy XP Pro machine that I'd REALLY like to speed up with new hardware for a while before migrating everything over to Win10. Any tips/advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Colif]

Here is how to put it on an Asus Z170: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/774554-How-to-install-Windows-XP-on-a-2016-Skylake-Asus-Z170-A-motherboard

it could become a chipset problem soon though. And shortly a CPU problem too: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2969466/skylake-cpu-run-windows-vista.html

 

[jones0610]

I very much appreciate the response Colif.

I did find that thread on overclockers several months ago but it really didn't address my issue. First, I m not trying to install XP.... I am just trying to take a known good XP Pro HDD and get it to boot on new Skylake hardware. And second, the procedure seemed unnecessarily convoluted.... especially since success seemed to be questionable.

I did try to "reverse engineer" the procedure to accomplish my objective but so far no luck.

As for Skylake supporting older versions of Windows in the future, all the more reason to run Ubuntu or some other *NIX distro. At $100 per license ($200 for Win10 Pro) *NOT* being tethered to Microsoft is obviously the direction smart builders will go. The ONLY reason I still have any Windows machines is because there are a few apps I need that won't run on a Linux platform. When that day comes, as it most certainly will, I won't miss MS one bit.

Again, all I want to do is get my current XP machines to run faster on new hardware for a few months. Some of those machines will ultimately be upgraded to Win10...others to Linux. In 6-9 months, all of the XP fleet will no longer be running XP.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear from anyone who has been able to upgrade their HW to Skylake on a WinXP machine..... what mobo they used and what "magic" incantations they needed to say to get their XP HDD/SDD to boot on the new iron.

This could well be a simple matter of finding a way to get the BIOS to see the boot information on an XP formatted drive. The ASUS M8F is rich in legacy support capabilities which is one of the reasons I chose it. I really like the ASUS M8 ROG line and would prefer to stay with it.