Boot up with Windows 7

[spike47]

Hi and good morning

My Motherboard a (Intel D845 GERG2 ) give up on me , it was running windows 7 , the problem I have is that I have installed a new Motherboard a ( Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2) but I am not able to boot up using the w7 on the HDD that I had been using with the old Motherboard ,!

I wanted to keep the files etc that was on the HDD that I was using on the Motherboard that packed up .

I thought that I could boot up with the W7 disc and keep the files programs etc that are on this drive .

I have tried the system recovery but it says it can not do it , is there some way of me been able to use this HDD with this newer Motherboard .

help,help.

cheers

spike

 

[carnageX]

When you say "can't boot up" I'm guessing you mean it's throwing up a BSOD, since you swapped motherboards.

If that's the case... then you're most likely going to have to reinstall Windows. You can try to boot into Safe Mode and see if you can at least get into Windows that way. There's usually a 50/50 shot of swapping hardware like that (motherboard and/or CPU) that it will boot up again. Usually Win7 Pro is more robust about it, and Win7 Home Premium tends to fail more often.

If you can't get into Windows, then it would be best to do an install without formatting, so you don't lose your documents/files. You'll still have to reinstall all your programs, but you can just move your files over to their proper locations. You can do this by booting off of the Win7 disc, choosing to Install, and select the same partition WITHOUT FORMATTING. It will say "A previous version of Windows was detected ... it will be stored in the Windows.old folder under the root of the drive" and ask to continue. If you continue, it will move your current install into C:\Windows.old and install a new copy of Windows.

Then you can copy over your documents/files from Windows.old under the user account folder, and then run a Disk Cleanup and remove the Windows.old folder to free up space.

 

[mito551]

As another option, if you have access to another PC, you could make yourself an ubuntu live-stick and use it to copy your documents to usb stick or portable HD.

 

[maarten]

Changing something like a motherboard doesn't always play well with Windows. If you have a similar type of motherboard with a similar cpu, it usually will work, but if the chipset on the new motherboard is newer, you may run in all sorts of problems. It's very likely Windows is loading an old chipset driver, that does not (yet) support the chipset you actually have on the mainboard.

What you could do, is use your Windows 7 DVD, and use a in-place upgrade (basically, upgrading Windows 7 with Windows 7), and it should retain all your documents and settings.

Of course, it is always wise to keep a backup at any time, especially when you make hardware changes.