I am upgrading my home computer with a new motherboard, processor, and memory. My system has 2 hard drives, one for the main system and the other for the Ghost backups of the main drive. Since I am upgrading my system with 3 new components, can I use Ghost to copy all of the programs, files, and settings to the main drive so that I don't need to install everything from scratch? Thanks for any help.
Maybe yes maybe no.
It's hard to give you any ideas without some more info.
The main problems in restoring a system on different hardware is with the hard drive controllers, hal, and version of windows.
Will the hard drive connection stay the same (IDE or SATA)?
Will you be changing from a single core CPU to a Multicore CPU?
Will the motherboard be the same brand?
Dave
How about running SYSPREP right before changing hardware?
Thanks for your reply. The computer I am upgrading is running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. The hard drives are both SATA 3gb/sec versions and both of the motherboards are from and will be Asus. Currently I am using the i7 920 processor with socket 1366. The upgrade will be an i5 2500K processor with a socket 1155. Thanks
I think I would try it without SYSPREP first. Make sure you have a valid backup just in case, though! You will probably have to reactivate WIndows after the change.
I love Asus :)
Would you know if both boards are using Intel chipsets. Not for the CPU. but the southbridge that controlls the hard drives.
Your old board might possibly have a nvidia chipset, but most of all the Asus boards use intel.
Every else looks the same, both CPU's are multicore and use the same hal, and both boards are SATA. I'm just wondering if they will still use the intel drivers and not have to switch between nvida and intel.
Dave
Thank you everyone for your feedback. My old system motherboard uses the Intel X58 chipset and has a 1366 CPU socket. The new motherboard will have an Intel P67 chipset and will have a 1155 CPU socket. The new motherboard will also have four 6gb/sec ports for the SATA hard drive.
My question basically is, how do I transfer the programs, files, and settings from my X58 chipset system to my new P67 chipset upgraded system? If I restore one of my Ghost image backups of my X58 system to the new P67 system, will Windows 7 need to find and configure all of the new features and hardware changes of the new board? From years past, I know doing this used to cause problems and conflicts. Is this no longer an issue with Windows 7? Other than restoring a Ghost image to the new motherboard, can Ghost transfer the programs a different way. Thank you again for your help.
Ghost is not really meant for transferring to different hardware. I think the hardware is close enough that Windows 7 will boot and install any drivers needed. It is worth a try if you are restoring an image to a new HDD. If it doesn't work, I would go to device manager and delete the drivers for IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and then capture a Ghost image. Restore this image and hopefully this will install the correct drivers. If that fails, I would run SYSPREP with the generalize option. Look in C:\Windows\System32\sysprep.
Thank you everyone for your replies. I think sysprep is what I will use. I just needed to do a little home work because I didn't know what it was and have never used it. What I intend to do before I install the new hardware, I will backup my system with Ghost to my second drive as I normally do. Then I will run sysprep on the main drive then reboot using the Ghost recovery disk. From there I will backup the sysprep drive. Part of my systems upgrade is going from a 3 gb/sec SATA hard drive to a 6 gb/sec drive. After finishing the upgrade I will restore the sysprep image onto the new hard drive. I assume that I will still need to install a few drivers and programs after the setup procedure is done, for possibly the sound system of the new motherboard and possibly for my HD video card. The chipset driver/inf program on the motherboard CD will also need to be run as well as any USB 3.0 drivers. But if Windows 7 and my other programs are still there and working, this is quite a time saving method. Thank again all.
