Switch motherboards without Reinstalling Windows

[Richard7991]

Hi guys! I'm a beginner PC builder but this time I'm just switching motherboards from my old one to a new motherboard. The new one is the MSI Gaming 5. Anyways, I want to change motherboards but the real question is, can I switch to a new motherboard without needing to reinstall windows? I really don't want to reinstall windows. So, like can I plug everything into the new motherboard and boot it up with the hard disk having my original windows on it, and the computer would work like nothing changed. Or do I need to plug everything in and boot it up and reinstall to a new clean windows?

The reason is that I really do not want to reinstall windows because I don't want to reinstall all my "stuff" (struggle) and I lose every program I have. So if you have any way around this without needing to reinstall Windows then it'll be great!

P.S. I've watched a few videos and they said that if you want to switch motherboards without reinstalling windows then i would need to uninstall all my drivers, like USB, sound, video and more, from my original windows. When I boot it up in the new motherboard it would install all the drivers. If this is a way please describe it more in detail! thanks !

 

[CelicaGT]

It is recommended to reinstall for a reason, you'll end up with a tangled mess in the registry and all kinds of driver issues regardless. In addition your windows license could be tied to your mainboard, not a huge issue unless it's an OEM board and OEM windows.

 

[Tradesman1]

What ver of Win? Win7 is good at this, even going AMD to Intel, Make backups of your data just in case, but plug in the drive and see if it will set itself up, if yes, update all the new mobo drivers, the run a registry cleaner (Wise has a good free version), and will prob have to reactivate Win. (Oft times this even is fine with OEM versions, MS is rather lax on letting folks upgrade OEM versions)

 

[CelicaGT]

What ver of Win? Win7 is good at this, even going AMD to Intel, Make backups of your data just in case, but plug in the drive and see if it will set itself up, if yes, update all the new mobo drivers, the run a registry cleaner (Wise has a good free version), and will prob have to reactivate Win. (Oft times this even is fine with OEM versions, MS is rather lax on letting folks upgrade OEM versions)

I'm not keen on this method, but with backups done whats to lose? And you will likely have to phone MS to reactivate if it's OEM...I got lucky once claiming mobo failure

 

[Tradesman1]

Win itself will tell you if you have to reactivate - you go to the web, it will generally give you an error message and code, you call and the computer has you input the code, it 'checks' then ask how many rigs the license is used on, you respond with 1 and about 95+% of the time it just gives you a new activation code.