Reinstalling windows

[prospectz]

 i have the fx 6350 rn with a gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 r1.2 and im upgrading to a ryzen 5 1600 af with the gigabyte b450m ds3h. basically, im upgrading my motherboard and cpu. i was told that all i need to do is reinstall windows and ill be good. is this true? how do i do this?

[Vandorlot]

You dont even need to reinstall windows. You may have to reactive it and choose windows boot manager in bios. 

[prospectz]

2 minutes ago, Vandorlot said:

You dont even need to reinstall windows. You may have to reactive it and choose windows boot manager in bios. 

rlly? i had another convo and everyone said to reinstall just to make sure. anyways, how do i reactivate? i bought this pc from someone who built it so i dont have the windows key

[AdamBGames]

18 minutes ago, prospectz said:

 i have the fx 6350 rn with a gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 r1.2 and im upgrading to a ryzen 5 1600 af with the gigabyte b450m ds3h. basically, im upgrading my motherboard and cpu. i was told that all i need to do is reinstall windows and ill be good. is this true? how do i do this?

You probably wont need to reinstall windows since you are going from AMD to AMD but just in case you want to here are the steps.

 

First move all essential data to an external drive, a quick way to do this is go to your C drive and copy the users folder, not everything will be in there but most stuff should be, you may need to seach for any specific things. You may also want to register your pc with a microsoft account since that will save your windows key as you will lose it after the reinstall, to do this you may already use a microsoft account to log in but if not, go to the settings and go to account, there you should be able to link an account.

 

After that is done, you need to download the windows 10 install tool and have a spare blank usb drive on hand, usb 3 would be better since it is faster but any drive should do as long as it is more than 8Gigs.

 

Run the tool and set the target drive to the usb, let that download and prepare the bootable drive.

 

Now install your new hardware, I would also suggest only plugging in your boot drive for now as to not potentially format the wrong drive.

 

Boot the pc and spam either delete or f2 to get into the bios, depending on the board it could be either, when you are in the bios, go to the boot section and change the order so the usb you have plugged in is the first on the list.

 

This will boot you into the windows install, click on next then custom, you will then be taken to a list of drives, if you did what I said you should only have 1 drive accessible, click that one and at the bottom it should say format, click format and ok. Then click the drive again and click next, this will begin the new install.

 

After the install is done, log in to your microsoft account from earlier to reactivate the system.

 

Now turn off the system and reinstall the other drives.

 

Once you are back into windows, go to the secondary drive you copied your files over to and copy the users drive, head to the c drive and paste it there

[Vandorlot]

They say that just in case because sometimes old drivers can cause windows to crash. You can look up tutorials it usually involves running a command on cmd prompt.

[Vandorlot]

Just now, Vandorlot said:

They say that just in case because sometimes old drivers can cause windows to crash. You can look up tutorials it usually involves running a command on cmd prompt.

Windows activation is wierd you might not even need to reactivate as it will do it for you.

[Enderman]

6 minutes ago, Vandorlot said:

You dont even need to reinstall windows. You may have to reactive it and choose windows boot manager in bios. 

Different motherboards have different drivers and firmware which can cause issues with windows, anything from it not booting to it having failing updates or programs slowing down or whatever.

 

A clean install is the proper way to change motherboards.

[prospectz]

23 minutes ago, AdamBGames said:

You probably wont need to reinstall windows since you are going from AMD to AMD but just in case you want to here are the steps.

 

First move all essential data to an external drive, a quick way to do this is go to your C drive and copy the users folder, not everything will be in there but most stuff should be, you may need to seach for any specific things. You may also want to register your pc with a microsoft account since that will save your windows key as you will lose it after the reinstall, to do this you may already use a microsoft account to log in but if not, go to the settings and go to account, there you should be able to link an account.

 

After that is done, you need to download the windows 10 install tool and have a spare blank usb drive on hand, usb 3 would be better since it is faster but any drive should do as long as it is more than 8Gigs.

 

Run the tool and set the target drive to the usb, let that download and prepare the bootable drive.

 

Now install your new hardware, I would also suggest only plugging in your boot drive for now as to not potentially format the wrong drive.

 

Boot the pc and spam either delete or f2 to get into the bios, depending on the board it could be either, when you are in the bios, go to the boot section and change the order so the usb you have plugged in is the first on the list.

 

This will boot you into the windows install, click on next then custom, you will then be taken to a list of drives, if you did what I said you should only have 1 drive accessible, click that one and at the bottom it should say format, click format and ok. Then click the drive again and click next, this will begin the new install.

 

After the install is done, log in to your microsoft account from earlier to reactivate the system.

 

Now turn off the system and reinstall the other drives.

 

Once you are back into windows, go to the secondary drive you copied your files over to and copy the users drive, head to the c drive and paste it there

i dont have an external hardrive i can use so should i just hope that it does it automaticly?

[homeap5]

Just plug and boot. If you know better - don't ask. Lot of people doing unnecessary things, but that doesn't mean you must be one of them. I have second motherboard in my computer, my wife too (and she switched from Intel to AMD), our systems was cloned few times to bigger drives and everything works good. And I upgraded lot of computers. There was time when I believe all that stuff like "you must reinstall everything even when you change mouse", but now I just know better because dozens of computers I made and upgrade.

[prospectz]

1 minute ago, homeap5 said:

Just plug and boot. If you know better - don't ask. Lot of people doing unnecessary things, but that doesn't mean you must be one of them. I have second motherboard in my computer, my wife too (and she switched from Intel to AMD), our systems was cloned few times to bigger drives and everything works good. And I upgraded lot of computers. There was time when I believe all that stuff like "you must reinstall everything even when you change mouse", but now I just know better because dozens of computers I made and upgrade.

thanks. didnt want todeal with that stuff anyway prob was just gonna hope for the best

[homeap5]

35 minutes ago, prospectz said:

thanks. didnt want todeal with that stuff anyway prob was just gonna hope for the best

If you want to be more "clean" after, you can use Ghostbuster tool for removing ghosted devices. But do it really careful - not every ghosted device should be removed. Old chipset - sure. Old drives - sure, why not. Old pendrives, devices you connect from time to time and system related stuff - no.

 

Or, if you don't know what to clean - just leave it as is. Unused drivers are unused, not working. Windows has lot of them stored just for made plug&play work.

 

One small hint - if you're using your own virtual memory settings, change it to automatic.

 

And before motherboard swap - link your local account to Microsoft Account, so you'll have no problem with re-activation (if Windows becomes unactivated anyway - use troubleshoot button).