Moving Win7 to new build. Best method?

[dbratton54]

I am going to upgrade my system from a Haswell CPU and Z87 chipset mobo to a Skylake CPU and Z170 mobo.

I just about have all my components selected, and this isn't my first build, so I am ok on that part.
What I am wondering about is my Windows 7 installation.

Is it best to just bite the bullet and reinstall on a freshly formatted drive? I would love to simply plug in the SATA cables from my drives and boot up from my existing boot drive then install new drivers as required but I just can't convince myself that that is a reasonable expectation.

I have a retail version of Win7 so I am fairly confident I can reinstall and activate without much problem.

Has anyone been through this recently that would care to share some thoughts?

 

[hang-the-9]

Best thing is to do a full clean setup, even if the old drive boots and does a driver update there are often odd slowness that happens when moving a hard drive from system to system.

 

[dbratton54]

Thanks. I have continued to think about this and I was right on the verge of just doing a clean install. You have helped me make up my mind to follow that path.