Advice on Mobo and CPU upgrade
Hello all. I am planning to make a major system upgrade. My current motherboard and CPU are 8 yrs old (ASUS Maximus II Formula and Q6700). My new mobo is an Gigabyte Z270 and cpu is i5-7600k. All other components will be used in place (upgrading the GPU and monitor later). On the Gigabyte I will also be using an internal PCIe MVe drive which I want to make my boot drive. All the existing disk (including my current boot drive with Windows 10 installed) are SATA.
So, I've thought of two approaches after installing the new mobo/cpu into the existing case:
Approach #1 - Connect all existing drives to the new mobo and configure the current boot drive (SATA) as the boot device. It might be worth a shot just to see if the system will boot. If it does, I can use the new Gigabyte utilities to update all the drivers. Then I could use Acronis to Clone the SATA boot drive to the MVe drive, then make the MVE drive the boot device (and repurpose the old boot drive). Somehow, though I don't think it will be that easy and I'll run into device driver issues and need Universal Restore to update the device drivers. So my question with this approach is could I skip the system restore (since the system is already on the drive) and go straight to Universal Restore to update drivers?
Approach #2 - Maybe not even connect my old SATA boot device, and go ahead and use Acronis to restore the system disk to the MVe SSD. Then use Universal Restore to update the chipset and disk controller drivers so the system is now bootable. My fear with this approach (and it might also apply to #1) is insuring I have all the appropriate device drivers included in the make of Universal Restore.
Either way, once I replace the mobo and cpu, there's no easy way to go back so I have to get the new system to boot. Complicating the whole thing is I cannot find a "native" copy of the device drivers. On my CD that comes with the motherboard and on the Gigabyte website, all the device drives seem to be included in a *.exe file. Been reading about how to use 7Zip to extract the drivers, but then they seem to come out as *.txt files. Is the solution just a matter of changing all the extensions to *.inf?
I would rate my skills and knowledge in this area as maybe medium. Thanks for any thoughts and advice.


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Pat L, so no Universal Restore involved at all? Thanks. You gave me a couple of new terms to look up and understand (UEFI and GPT). It's been a few years since I've delved this deep. I'm still exploring a way to extract the chipset and disk controller drivers. I have a question into Gigabyte asking if there is a runtime parameter to just extract the files - something like [setup.exe - extract "location"]. Alternately I thought about just running the Gigabyte chipset and disk controller setup programs on my current system so they would extract the .inf files, but not sure whether that would hose my current system before I could copy the files to a USB.
If I can't find a way to first extract the files, I will try the way you suggested. Final fall back is always a clean install.
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I may have found my solution,.Gigabyte tech support pointed me to the Intel chipset driver update. It is a .exe but has an "-extract " command line parameter.
I think I'l first just "back it up and try it" as you suggest. I'll have the Universal restore with the extracted drivers ready if the first attempt doesn't work. If all else fails, clean install (and the pain that goes with it).
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Melton, a lot of the setup .exe files can actually be opened by utilities such as 7zip and explored as if they are zip files - worth giving it a try to see.
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Thanks Steve. I tried 7Zip and it did extract files. But there were MANY of them (as expected) and they were all typeless (no extensions). I would have had to put the .inf extension on all of them for Universal Restore to recognized the. I wasn't sure if I could assume they were all .inf.
I'll try the "-extract" command line parameter on the Intel chipset exe and see how that works. Haven't had a chance to just yet. Even if I can build UR, I might try the Patl L approach first, Universal Restore next, and finally just a clean install of the other methods don't pan out.
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Understand about using zip for these files.
One option would be to do a quick & dirty vanilla basic install on the new hardware of the new OS, install the drivers then use a utility such as Double-Driver to save all the required files for the specific drivers for you. I used this recently when the latest Windows 10 Insiders build decided that one of my base system devices was unknown where I extracted the device drivers from the Windows folder of an older version of Windows 10 to stop the nag after every reboot to 'Finish installing device...'. DD allows you to scan your current or another system to find drivers.
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In reply to I may have found my solution… by truwrikodrorow…

So how did it work out? Were you able to boot on the old disk on the new motherboard?
I was stunned it worked out without UR in my case despite the double migration from one motherboard to another and from MBR to GPT...
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Thanks for following up Pat L. I haven't gotten to it yet. Probably not 'till the weened of the 8th. Having some trouble building UR and working with Tech support to resolve. I'll be sure to come back and post how things go.
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Question - Does universal restore REQUIRE that you first restore from a TIB? What I plan connect all of my existing disk to the new mobo and configure my current C drive as the boot disk. I created my universal restore DVD and wanted to test it our first.
The acronis backup starts fine and see's my existing disk and the TIBs. I shut that down and then start UR. It says it cannot find any OS - this is on my existing, functioning mobo and system.
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Melton, early on in this topic you mentioned about migrating from Legacy BIOS to UEFI if I remember correctly, if so, then you would need to restore a backup from your legacy system while booting the Acronis Rescue media in UEFI mode in order to convert the backup to work in this mode as GPT.
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Okay, happy to report I have complete the mobo and CPU upgrade and now have my Win10 OS zooming along on the MVMe SSD M.2 drive!!
I did essentially what Pat L proposed in the 2nd post. First I ran a full backup of my C drive (which is stored on an external USB disk). After replacing the mobo and CPU and then leak testing for 24 hrs (my system is water cooled), I started the new system and booted immediately into BIOS. Set up the BIOS as Legacy, and made my old SATA C drive the boot drive. I saved and exited out of BIOS and the Windows boot continued.
Saw an onscreen message that Windows was "Getting devices ready" for about 30-45 seconds, and then the Windows login screen came up. Wow! No restore needed. No Universal Restore needed. Windows 10 handled it all. I then loaded in the Gigabyte CD that came with the mobo and ran the .exe to install/update all the drivers. Once done I rebooted and back into windows. Ran the Gigabyte utility (just installed) to see which drivers/applications from the CD needed updated. Updated all of those.
Along the way I had done a lot of researching in forums on the net. My NVMe drive is a Samsung, so I went to that site and found a Data Migration utility for cloning an old system disk onto the NVMe and making it the new boot disk. Downloaded and ran the utility which ran without a hitch.
The I rebooted and went into BIOS, changed all the disk settings from legacy to UEFI, enabled the CSM support setting, disabled the old Sata boot drive, and made the NVMe drive the priority boot device. Save and exited BIOS and it booted immediately into Windows from the new boot drive.
Of course Windows was not activated due to the hardware change (mine was an OEM version), but I had already purchased a USB copy of Windows 10 Pro. All I had to do was update the product key. Only issue I have now is that Acronis is reporting that I have exceeded the max number of installations (I purchased 3 and I guess it thinks I now have a 4th) and I have 29 days left to remedy. I can work with Acronis on that - unless someone knows where I can go to update that.
All-in-all, it went better than I could have wished for. I migrated h/w and migrated my Windows 10 without having to do a clean install. THANKS for all the help!
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Melton, glad to hear the positive feedback on your experience of upgrading to new hardware.
Please see KB 58554: Acronis True Image 2017: "You've exceeded the maximum number of activations for this serial number" which should help with the activation issue.
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Thanks for the KB article, Steve. Took 5 seconds. QED!
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Thanks for the feedback Melton, glad it is all sorted!
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I believe I've discovered my answer. The Intel chipset driver update was recommended by Gigabyte tech support. Although it is an.exe, it has a command line parameter called "-extract."
I'm going to "back it up and try it," as you suggest. If the first attempt fails, I'll use the Universal restore with the extracted drivers. If all else fails, perform a clean installation (and the pain that goes with it).
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Hello zicd0kr bynncd,
would you mind sharing the outcome with the community? Did you succeed in updating the drivers as per the instructions posted?
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