Replace mother board

I am currently dual booting on two separate hard drives. XP professional 32bit on one and Windows 7 professional 64 bit on the other. No problems with this. I am going to buy a new mother board but swap my processor and ram from the old mother board to the new mother board. The new mother board is the same make as the old one but much more advanced. My old mother board is a Gigabyte GA-H61M-S2P-B3 (Rev 1.0.) The new mother board will be a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP7 (Rev 1.0) Will this change in mother board affect my dual booting and if so do I need to do anything in advance. Both disks are backed up at regular intervals.
 
The problem shouldn't be with dual booting, but possibly with Windows itself.
If your OSs are retail versions, then the change of mobo will probably necessitate re-activation of both OSs, which should be a mere formality, but the OS driver sets will probably not support some of the new mobo functions and the OSs might well require in-place upgrades.
If they are OEM licences though, a change of mobo will most likely invalidate both, and MS will refuse to reactivate unless the upgrade was forced on you by hardware failure and non-availability of a like-for-like replacement.
 
Hello Terry
Thank you for your very informative reply. Both my operating systems are OEM. I will contact Microsoft to see if there is any way around this without buying retail versions. Thank you
Ted
 
Hello again Terry
I have just go off the phone with Microsoft UK and explained that I only want to upgrade just the mother board. I explained that both my operating systems were OEM and had been purchaced and installed by myself. The Microsoft person said that once I install the new mother board the activation may fail, if so, phone Microsoft and they will help me out. i.e. activate both systems for me.
Thank you once again.
Ted
 
Nice to know they're prepared to bend a little.
The official line has always seemed to be, HDD, CPU, GPU - OK that's an upgrade. Mobo, no way! that's a new PC.
 
One other problem with a motherboard replacement is the user may have to do a repair install for XP - and that could be impossible to do with an OEM install.
 
The CD you get with an OEM licence as a system builder (as opposed to the OEM CD(s) you get with a PC with Windows pre-installed) is identical to a full retail version (except the price (and the restrictive key)), so it's OK for a clean or repair install.
The problem with XP might be that a very new mobo might need drivers which XP just doesn't have (and never will since it's approaching EOL).
 
Hello again Terry
First of all. Happy new year to you. To cut a long story short I built a completley new computer except for the 2 hard drives, one with xp pro 32 bit (2tB) and the other with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit (1tB). I was able to activate the XP over the internet but had to talk to Microsoft about Win 7. They would not agree so as I only had the Win 7 with no other programs I purchased a retail version. All is now OK. I have a question which may not be the right place / forum for this. I want to change my 1tB drive with Win 7 on for a 3tB drive but will have to change it from MRB to GPT before I install Win 7 – so Win 7 will ‘see’ the whole drive, can I still duel boot XP pro on a MRB drive with Win 7 on a GPT drive. Both will be formatted NTFS

Thank you
 
Back
Top