Swapping out Motherboards.

[Samuel Seabrooke]

I'm swapping my MSI A78m-E45 and A10-5800k for an ASUS A88x-M board with an Athlon 860K. My question is what do I need to do before hand so that everything runs back to normal once I plug my SSD back into the Mobo?

Also, Im putting those same old components into somebody else's new build, but need to install a fresh OS, what needs to be done there? Or will it be fine since the OS and HDD will be completely clean and new?

(Running a legally downloaded version of Windows 8.1 from the MS website).

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

On your rig, you'll need to reinstall Windows since the motherboard ID will be different to what's recorded in the registry of the existing Windows installation.

Windows does not like having a new motherboard thrust upon it, it will throw up all manner of errors because the old hardware ID will not match the new hardware. hence you have to install Windows from scratch again, though being a PC builder/upgrader you should know all that.

On the other rig your putting your old components in to, provided everything is compatible you just need to install Windows and I can't see you having any issues there.

 

[USAFRet]

PC #1
Swapping motherboard and CPU
Reinstall the OS and applications

PC #2
Install the OS as usual

You will, of course, need two valid os licenses for the two PC's.