Dead mother board replacement - will I need to re-install everything

[heni30]

Looks like my mobo is kaput. If I replace it with the same exact mobo will I have to re-install everything?

 

I'm deducing this because power turns on (fans, hdds) but there is no POST. The keyboard lights do not come on. I can turn it right off with one push of the start button.

 

Tried re-seating ram, power cable, etc.

[Dimitris Tolios]

No, chances are that you can make the switch to the same model with no need to re-installing anything.

Actually Win 7-8 will have few issues even if you swap the HDD/SSD containing the OS to a completely different model of motherboard, even AMD.

Drivers etc will need to be updated in any case where the motherboard is not 100% the same as the previous one, but much of that process will be handled by the OS automatically.

 

 

The only fear is that should you have applications installed in more than one drive volumes (i.e. OS @ C: drive, but some apps @ D: drive), and if those volumes are on disks, some registry values might break if the BIOS assigns different letters to the disks. Transfering a single disk containing all OS / Apps etc should have few to no issues after re-installing drivers (if needed).

[heni30]

Thanks Dimitris,

 

The Lord smiled upon me and fried my motherboard 3 days before the deadline instead of the night before.

[heni30]

New motherboard - same model installed. Everything is up and running - no problemo!

 

I always keep a spare psu so just to be sure, I swapped them out beforehand; no change.

 

I also took took the opportunity to slap on a Noctua NH-U14S cpu cooler. Whoa! it's like 5 times the size of the stock cooler that was on there.

 

What a quality made product! Everything from the packaging, to solid parts through out, and clean engineering is top notch.

Edited December 8, 2014 by heni30