Hardware upgrade procedure?

[Gudd]

I'm upgrading my hardware tomorrow and am rather hoping I'm going to be able to NOT do a clean install of everything as both my Win 7 and OS X installs have shed loads of data on them.

This is not a major, major upgrade, more of a refresh but it does involve a new motherboard, CPU and GPU. Basically someone asked me to build a system for them so the opportunity to refresh mine for not too much money came up and I took it.

Current System Details:
Mobo: Gigabyte EP35-DS3
CPU: C2Q E6600 2.4Ghz (O/c to 3Ghz)
Mem: 4 x 2GB = 8GB
GPU: XFX GTX280 1GB (or 1.2, whatever it is!)

New System Details:
Mobo: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R v.2
CPU: i7 950 3.06Ghz (will o/c later)
Mem: 3 x 2GB = 6GB (for now)
GPU: XFX HD5870 1GB

I can't afford to do everything in one hit so I plan on removing the drives from the old system and popping them into the new system. SSD and bigger drives will have to follow later. Here is the partition map.

HDD1:
disk0s1: EFI partition
disk0s2: OS X 10.6.6
disk0s3: Ubuntu 10.10
disk0s4: Linux Swap

HDD2:
disk0s1: Windows Boot
disk0s2: Windows 7 Ultimate
disk0s3: Windows XP

All legitimate purchased software incidentally.

In the EFI I have:
- Chameleon (2.0-RC4)
- modified boot.plist with "GraphicsEnabler = Yes", "EthernetBuiltIn = Yes" and a device string for my graphics and for my network.
- LegacyHDA.kext
- NVEnabler 64.kext
- NullCPUPowerManagement.kext
- OpenHaltRestart.kext
- PlatformUUID.kext
- fakesmc.kext

Ok, I think that's all the info!

I can handle the Windows side just fine, and I know I'd probably be ok with the OS X side of things having done all the software updates for the last 2 years on a "shoot first, worry about it later" basis (and succeeding in every case incidentally). I want to minimise my pain as much as possible though.

So, after I've sorted the Windows side of things, boot with the new motherboard / old graphics card first and sort all of that out, in which case any specifics need to change?

Or should I add the new graphics to the old system and get that working first? Again, any specifics?

I kind of feel like if I jump in with both feet and just try to boot the new motherboard and new graphics with the old install I might open up a major can of pain

Thoughts very much welcome - aside from "wipe the disks" (no, seriously, getting that 4 way boot working was a major pain, and I really can't remember how I did it now!)

 

[spencerlievens]

Backup all of your essential data to external drives. Format and Reinstall, your doing a complete motherboard swap so there really is no other option unless you want a very unstable system.

 

[Going Bald]

I'm upgrading my hardware tomorrow and am rather hoping I'm going to be able to NOT do a clean install of everything as both my Win 7 and OS X installs have shed loads of data on them.

This is not a major, major upgrade, more of a refresh but it does involve a new motherboard, CPU and GPU. Basically someone asked me to build a system for them so the opportunity to refresh mine for not too much money came up and I took it.

Current System Details:
Mobo: Gigabyte EP35-DS3
CPU: C2Q E6600 2.4Ghz (O/c to 3Ghz)
Mem: 4 x 2GB = 8GB
GPU: XFX GTX280 1GB (or 1.2, whatever it is!)

New System Details:
Mobo: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R v.2
CPU: i7 950 3.06Ghz (will o/c later)
Mem: 3 x 2GB = 6GB (for now)
GPU: XFX HD5870 1GB

I can't afford to do everything in one hit so I plan on removing the drives from the old system and popping them into the new system. SSD and bigger drives will have to follow later. Here is the partition map.

HDD1:
disk0s1: EFI partition
disk0s2: OS X 10.6.6
disk0s3: Ubuntu 10.10
disk0s4: Linux Swap

HDD2:
disk0s1: Windows Boot
disk0s2: Windows 7 Ultimate
disk0s3: Windows XP

All legitimate purchased software incidentally.

In the EFI I have:
- Chameleon (2.0-RC4)
- modified boot.plist with "GraphicsEnabler = Yes", "EthernetBuiltIn = Yes" and a device string for my graphics and for my network.
- LegacyHDA.kext
- NVEnabler 64.kext
- NullCPUPowerManagement.kext
- OpenHaltRestart.kext
- PlatformUUID.kext
- fakesmc.kext

Ok, I think that's all the info!

I can handle the Windows side just fine, and I know I'd probably be ok with the OS X side of things having done all the software updates for the last 2 years on a "shoot first, worry about it later" basis (and succeeding in every case incidentally). I want to minimise my pain as much as possible though.

So, after I've sorted the Windows side of things, boot with the new motherboard / old graphics card first and sort all of that out, in which case any specifics need to change?

Or should I add the new graphics to the old system and get that working first? Again, any specifics?

I kind of feel like if I jump in with both feet and just try to boot the new motherboard and new graphics with the old install I might open up a major can of pain

Thoughts very much welcome - aside from "wipe the disks" (no, seriously, getting that 4 way boot working was a major pain, and I really can't remember how I did it now!)

Hate to tell you this, but Win7 at least is going to have to be a complete re-install. You can move the drive to a new motherboard, but when you try to boot Win7 you will get a black screen and a notice that "You may be the victim of software piracy. Please contact the Microsoft Help Desk to resolve this issue" and that is as far as you are going to get. You can thank Microsoft's anti-piracy campaign for this.
BTW, how did you get WinXP to leave the Win7 restore points alone? Or did you even notice that every time you boot WinXP that it destroys them?

Don't want to rain on your parade, but it would be best to back up all data files to external hard drives and do complete re-installs if you want a stable system.

Treat it like you just bought all new hardware and you have the pleasure of making the system work from scratch - a challenge, not a chore.

 

[Gudd]

This isn't going to end well by the sound of it!

At the moment all I've done is put the ATI card into the old machine as I'm still waiting for the DDR3 ram to arrive. Windows is fine (as expected) but I can't get OS X to boot at all yet, not with -x or -s or anything. Happy days! I've done the stuff I would have expected to have to do like remove the device string from the plist, the NVidia inject kext's and all that kind of stuff. Haven't finished playing yet though.

As far as XP is concerned, no, I've not noticed anything odd going on at all. I do only boot into it once in a blue moon though. Frankly it's only there as some software for reading and writing alien format floppy disks doesn't work with my Win 7 install.

Windows 7 will boot to the black screen and de-register itself, yes, but what's wrong with using slmgr to go back to an unregistered state and then simply re-activate? Admittedly I've not tried it yet!

And don't get me started on Ubuntu. That's the last thing i expected to have a problem with. Can't get that to boot even with the NVidia drivers uninstalled :?