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I plan to switch motherboards to take advantage of SLI technology (finally, lol!) But since I have been using and tweaking Windows XP and Vista (each is installed on one partition; dual-boot operation) for a little over a year now, I really don't want to reformat my entire hard drive. I read somewhere on the web it is possible to retain all of the settings, applications, and documents simply by executing a repair install. However, in this case, this presents some concerns:

Will repairing one operating system corrupt the other installation?
Windows Vista has a unique repair function in which the Setup program would detect any problems and attempt to repair them.
Does the repair function delete all the installed drivers?

Thanks

EDIT: While reading several tutorials online, I came up with another concern. One day, I swapped a Dell motherboard with that of an Emachines and I ran into a BSOD. I figured driver conflicts caused the error. Each tutorial I read instructed me to uninstall any critical drivers related to the motherboard in Safe Mode, then do a repair install.

Is it really necessary to perform a repair even after uninstalling all the critical drivers? Isn't it more wise to simply uninstall the drivers (in safe mode), swap the motherboard, and let Windows install the new drivers WITHOUT doing a repair install?

I bet this kind of "operation" will bring up oodles of problems. Ughhhhh

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:46 pm Post subject:

I've always read that switching a mobo usually requires a reinstall of your operating systems, if you don't want any problems or BSODs. If I were you, I'd back up all my stuff onto another storage medium, and load the files back once my OS was reinstalled, since it's not advisable to keep an OS install after a mobo swap.

I'm pretty sure that if you repair an XP installation, it'll overwrite the Vista Master Boot Record, and you won't be able to boot into Vista until you repair Vista and replace the XP MBR with the Vista MBR.

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:08 am Post subject: I'm pretty sure...

I'm pretty sure nothing will happen. Your previous magic smoke extraction was chiefly due to the Dell system. They are bad about proprietary Bios. I swapped my hard-drive to my new mobo setup and all I had to do was let the system recognize the new environment and call MS to restart windows on the new hardware ID.

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:18 am Post subject: Re: I'm pretty sure...

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:44 am Post subject:

Your question reminded me of a recent computer magazine article regarding the issue. I searched and rummaged around my archive and found it. The magazine is Maximum PC. This is an excerpt taken from a section they have called "Ask the Doctor", where you can e-mail an editor that will *beep* couple questions each month to answer.

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:25 am Post subject: heh...

heh....a magazine I never heard of with an anonymous "doctor"....that's where I'd get my advice from. My personal experience is that aint necessarily so. Before swapping the mobo, however, you may want to revert the program back to basic vga drivers to avoid display issues till you set the new drivers for your new adapters. Windows has some amazing self healing powers if ya'll would just let go of the steering wheel from time to time.

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:35 am Post subject:

This is interesting.

The method described here involves Sysprep, a utility that re-enables the Setup function of Windows XP. Read on for more details:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic48387.html

I also found the "deployment tools" for Windows Vista on the Microsoft website. If I execute the same procedure on the Vista partition as well, then both OS's should go through Setup and install the new drivers.

However, I'm still considering the old-fashioned way in which one performs a repair install after backing up crucial data, uninstalling some drivers, and swapping the mainboards.

I am aware of Heeshung's advice: Performing a repair install of Windows XP might erase the MBR and cause Windows XP to become the default OS, therefore rendering Vista unbootable. HOWEVER, I have EasyBCD installed on Windows XP. EasyBCD is simply an emulated Vista bootloader. Since I already have a bootloader programmed into its database, I can allow EasyBCD to RESTORE the Vista bootloader, suppose XP does erase the MBR.

THEN I would do a repair on VISTA.

Wow. What a plan. If any part of this post is confusing, please do tell me, and I will clarify.

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:01 pm Post subject:

Whatever you do, I suggest backing up your most valuable data. I'm interested to see what happens.