So it used to be that you could swap a motherboard in a PC running Windows XP and not have to format and re-install. Along comes Vista and Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, removed the repair install feature. I've read numerous forum posts saying you need a retail DVD for it to work - tried that and it didn't help... Other people said it's to do with the service packs and you need a DVD with the same service pack as is installed on the machine - this didn't help me either. Eventually I came across a something completely by accident that made my day! I've been using Acronis TrueImage for backups, especially complete system image ones, for quite a while now. I was retoring a backup with the 2010 version the other day and found something called "Acronis Universal Restore".
From the Acronis knowledge base:
"Acronis Universal Restore lets you restore an image of Windows operating system to different hardware environment; Acronis Universal Restore allows to change Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer and install HDD controller and NIC drivers"
Awesome. The very next Vista-box-with-a-dead-motherboard job I got, I tried it and it worked beautifully! So the moral of the story is: I can't recommend this product enough.
I thought it was a bit odd that Norton Ghost, which has long been the industry standard imaging software didn't have this feature, so I started nosing around on their website. They do indeed have a product that claims to do this, called "Symantec Ghost Solution Suite". It's currently at version 2.5 which they claim supports up to Windows 7 (as does Acronis) but I am yet to try it.
Anyways, hope this saves some of you from re-formatting.
http://www.acronis.com/
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