Upgrading: hardware -> OS, or vice versa?

Ender

I'm upgrading my mobo, CPU and RAM, as well as an upgrade from XP 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit.

Would it be better to install the hardware first, then the OS upgrade, or should I do the OS first?

BlazeFire

Hardware first. OS will configure itself for the mobo/CPU.

a5ehren

Yeah, definitely do the hardware first. You're probably best off doing a clean install of the OS anyway.

Ender

Sweet, that was the plan. Thanks homies!

Djeet

You will not be able to upgrade from XP 32 to Win7x64. There are no upgrade paths in any OS that goes from 32 to 64 bits or vice versa.

Doesn't change things. Plug-in the hardware and after XP installs everything and you do your updates run the Win7 installer and a fresh Win7 will be installed with old OS files in a windows.old folder (or somesuch).

Personally I'd buy a new hard disk. Pull the old disk. Install new hardware and then do a fresh Win7 install. Then plug in old disk to pull over backup files.

Stormwatcher

always hardware first, because you'll have to reinstall the OS anyway after changing the motherboard even if you had a clean new fresh OS install.

amnesiasoft

Stormwatcher wrote: »

always hardware first, because you'll have to reinstall the OS anyway after changing the motherboard even if you had a clean new fresh OS install.

Uh... no. You'll probably have to reactivate Windows, but you definitely don't need to reinstall the OS. But regardless of whether you do or not, I'd still do hardware then OS anyway.

Djeet

If any of you guys can point me to a situation where you can "upgrade" a Windows OS from 32 bit to 64 bit I'd eat my hat.

I wear hats.

Right now it's a natural fiber cap so I think I could do it, but I'm pretty sure I won't have to since MS have never supported such an upgrade path.

Stormwatcher

amnesiasoft wrote: »

Stormwatcher wrote: »

always hardware first, because you'll have to reinstall the OS anyway after changing the motherboard even if you had a clean new fresh OS install.

Uh... no. You'll probably have to reactivate Windows, but you definitely don't need to reinstall the OS. But regardless of whether you do or not, I'd still do hardware then OS anyway.

Well, good luck dealing with all the crappy stupid issues you'd get with a new mobo on an old install.

amnesiasoft

Stormwatcher wrote: »

amnesiasoft wrote: »

Stormwatcher wrote: »

always hardware first, because you'll have to reinstall the OS anyway after changing the motherboard even if you had a clean new fresh OS install.

Uh... no. You'll probably have to reactivate Windows, but you definitely don't need to reinstall the OS. But regardless of whether you do or not, I'd still do hardware then OS anyway.

Well, good luck dealing with all the crappy stupid issues you'd get with a new mobo on an old install.

I guess I just got excessively lucky then? The only problems I had were having to reactivate Windows and Photoshop.

Stormwatcher

Not long ago, Windows wouldn't even boot if you got a new mobo (with a different chipset, of course). Nowadays it boots, but all kinds of weirdness go on, unless the new mobo is very very similar to the old one.

a5ehren

Yeah, I remember those days too.

These days it seems that as long as you have the latest chipset infs/drivers installed before the swap it'll go OK. But if you're doing a clean install anyway, it's way better to just do it on the new hardware.

Djeet

Interest piqued. @amnesiasoft you popped in XP64 CD and upgraded an XP32 install? Which version? I'd like to try that.

Dehumanized

Yeah, there has never been nor will there ever be an upgrade path from x86 to x64 beyond doing a clean install.

Quantux

Windows will perform an "upgrade" from x86 XP to x64 vista/7/8 (probably). You run setup while in XP, it copies some files, and reboots to the installer which will dump your XP install into a .old folder. It basically does a clean install (the first time I did it, I chose to wipe the drive) but accepts the upgrade key. It's actually the only Windows "upgrade" I would recommend...

amnesiasoft

Djeet wrote: »

Interest piqued. @amnesiasoft you popped in XP64 CD and upgraded an XP32 install? Which version? I'd like to try that.

I haven't made a single comment in here about upgrading from x86 to x64. Because you can't do it. I don't know where you got that idea.

Motherboard upgrade I did was an Asus P5N-E SLI (Nvidia 650i chipset) to an Asus P8Z68-V LE (Intel Z68 chipset).

Djeet

So this discussion is a lot of people saying the exact damn thing? Lovely.


When people talk about "upgrading" their system they want to do it cause they don't have to reinstall all their apps and settings. They want to move from one OS to another and retain their installed app base. I'm not sure how counselling that yes, you can swap out hardware on your XPx86 installation and all you'd need to do is reactivate apps or Windows when they are still going to have to do a fresh install of Win7x64, and thus need to reinstall all their apps.