Swapping out hardware with Windows 7
Just thought I'd share my experience of a hardware change on an existing Win 7 installation.
In the past, hardware changes have always been followed by a clean install as a recommended practice (although both XP and Vista had workarounds to "repair" the installations which sometimes worked).
Last week I had to swap out a motherboard after BIOS failure. I moved from an ASUS Commando to an ASUS P5Q Deluxe.
After rebuilding the machine, I figured I'd have a go at booting into the existing Win 7 installation for a laugh fully expecting blue screens but, to my surprise, it booted into a VGA mode and installed a few drivers, then rebooted into normal Win 7 and went through a process of updating most of the hardware drivers automatically. Final reboot and we were running as if nothing had happened.
I then manually updated all important drivers from manufacturers websites and I've had a completely stable system running since. I've run a fair few intensive tests and played hours of MW2 without any issues.
I did have to go through the Windows re-activation process which included a free call to a MS advisor but that took 5 mins in all.
Hardware swap - 20 mins
VGA driver update - 1 min
Hardware driver refresh - 10 mins
Microsoft reactivation - 5 mins
Total: 36mins
This is just another feather in the Win 7 cap as far as I'm concerned.
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