Changing a motherboard, do I lose anything?

[Trickname]

This is the first time I'm upgrading my computer rather than building from scratch or buying a prebuilt one and I'm not sure on a few things.

When I change my motherboard do I lose my OS and things life Microsoft office (or anything important / costly to replace really) or is all that stuff linked to my hard drive?

Thanks for any help.

[Shadow Fox]

Software / Data is stored on the Harddrive / Solid State Drives. The Motherboard doesn't store any information except for BIOS.

Unless you use some sort of Drive Encryption; You should be able to just connect and power the driver to the new board, and all should be fine.
A new motherboard, it may request you go into the BIOS and inspect a few things, or go into Setup mode. In either case, the data on your Drive should be unaffected.

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However: I'm not a computer-guru by any degree, but I am 99% sure that you can just hook it up to the new motherboard without issue.

[chazus]

What are you changing to/from?

Usually when you change something as drastic as a motherboard, you're going to likely have to reinstall windows (Which in turn will/should wipe the drive).

I would suggest backing everything up that you need first, replace board, wipe drive, do a CLEAN install. That is best practice.

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However: I'm not a computer-guru by any degree, but I am 99% sure that you can just hook it up to the new motherboard without issue.

Changing chipsets will usually cause the OS not to boot. Sometimes it might, but its highly recommended not to go that route, because it leaves things screwed up.

[tomathy]

you will need to install the motherboard chipset drivers and what not, and doing that on top of the old ones is not ideal at all, and dont be suprised if things dont work right

[Shadow Fox]

What are you changing to/from?

Usually when you change something as drastic as a motherboard, you're going to likely have to reinstall windows (Which in turn will/should wipe the drive).

I would suggest backing everything up that you need first, replace board, wipe drive, do a CLEAN install. That is best practice.

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Changing chipsets will usually cause the OS not to boot. Sometimes it might, but its highly recommended not to go that route, because it leaves things screwed up.

Not saying you're wrong in anyway, but I am curious why a person should NOT put their primary OS harddrive onto a new motherboard without a reinstall?

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What are you changing to/from?

Usually when you change something as drastic as a motherboard, you're going to likely have to reinstall windows (Which in turn will/should wipe the drive).

I would suggest backing everything up that you need first, replace board, wipe drive, do a CLEAN install. That is best practice.

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Changing chipsets will usually cause the OS not to boot. Sometimes it might, but its highly recommended not to go that route, because it leaves things screwed up.

Ooooh!... Okay!
So it's not so much that data will be lost, it is more that the drive it self may fail; in turn, losing data?

[chazus]

Not saying you're wrong in anyway, but I am curious why a person should NOT put their primary OS harddrive onto a new motherboard without a reinstall?

I'm not sure if I worded it wrong, but they're going to use their primary drive on the new board. HOWEVER, in the process of doing so, they are either going to

A) Want to do a clean install (thus losing the data)
B) It wont boot (thus losing the data in an easily usable form)
C) It will boot, but things will work funky, and the registry will be a mess. It's more problems than its worth, and really only recommended doing in a case of the old motherboard literally died, and you want to try to boot it up on a new board once to get the data backed up proper, before wiping it.

[Charge me Doctor]

You'll have to somehow remove register entries about your hard drive and shit (iirc hklm>system>currentcontrolset>services> and change value of "start" to 0 on stuff like amdide), so new controller will know what the fuck you plugged into it. It's quite easy and takess less time than clean instal, also all your data is safe

[Shadow Fox]

I'm not sure if I worded it wrong, but they're going to use their primary drive on the new board. HOWEVER, in the process of doing so, they are either going to

A) Want to do a clean install (thus losing the data)
B) It wont boot (thus losing the data in an easily usable form)
C) It will boot, but things will work funky, and the registry will be a mess. It's more problems than its worth, and really only recommended doing in a case of the old motherboard literally died, and you want to try to boot it up on a new board once to get the data backed up proper, before wiping it.

Ah!
I learned something tonight! Thanks!~ <Vanishes from the thread before making herself look stupid for giving wrong information!>

[chazus]

Ah!
I learned something tonight! Thanks!~ <Vanishes from the thread before making herself look stupid for giving wrong information!>

It's all good. Honestly, getting new hardware (in my opinion) is a opportunity, not an obstacle. Its like spring cleaning. It's not just the registry, but all the crap that has built up over the years from installs, uninstalls, crashes, and this that and the other thing. It gives us a reason to back things up (when they probably havent) and organize all the crap we've downloaded, created, or otherwise gathered over the years.

I'm terrible about that.

Everything I get goes on my desktop. And when my desktop gets too cluttered, I throw everything into a folder called Desktop. It's an awful system, and my OCD makes me have a damn near panic attack every time I go into that folder looking for something.

[Trickname]

Thanks for the help guys, really appreciated. so if I have this right I'll need to back things up and start with fresh install of my OS if I want to avoid any issues when booting up / using my computer?

Not fully sure what my current motherboard is (not showing on system info), it came as a semi premade package about 4-5 years ago. I'm planning on getting a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 ATX motherboard with an AMD FX 8350 CPU.

Apologies for causing red hand prints on foreheads.

[MyndZero]

OS's these days will likely boot under a new motherboard, worst case you may need to do a start-up repair so it can put in a different generic driver to boot with, and if that doesn't work (again, pretty unlikely in modern OS's these days unless you're going from like Intel > AMD, vise versa) then it likely won't ever boot using any easy methods.

Just be sure to install your motherboard drivers, usually Chipset can get all of this for you, so get that off the CD or off their website for your specific motherboard. Good idea to remove the other motherboard chipset driver if you know which one it is, if you're unsure, just install the new one so you don't risk breaking anything.

[Denpepe]

I would like to add that changing motherboards may mess with your windows if you have an OEM copy as it will be tied to the motherboard so you may have to call an automated system to get your copy reset, if you have a retazil copy of windows this should be a non issue