Restore to New Motherboard
I have to replace my motherboard. I have TI Plus Pack and will be doing a Universal Restore. I know that I will need to have access to the new board drivers on a separate drive, which I do. I have two questions.
1. Should I have all my other drivers, ie., printers, tablet, dongle key, internal drives, external drives, etc. on the same drive that the new MB drivers will be on? Or, will Acronis keep them on my system backup and install as part of the Universal Restore?
2. Will I need to reinstall all of the programs that were on the old system, ie., Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. or will they be reinstalled from my system backup?
Thanks James F.
That helps, but raises a couple of questions. I am replacing the old video card and the original Intel 128gb SSD with a Samsung 256gb SSD. Will I need the Samsung disk controller or will that controller come with the new MB installation disk?
James,
Hope you don't mind me replying.
Morrie,
As James pointed out, successful migration to new hardware using Universal Restore typically only requires chipset and storage controller drivers to get a restored image bootong on a new MB. The Storage controller is a chip or integrated into a chipset on the MB. It has nothing to do with the brand of disk or SSD you are using.
It's best to have the chipset and storage controller .inf drivers available for UR during the restore process. Video drivers will not be needed as windows is usually pretty resillient when new video hardware is detected and the installed drivers don't match. It wil usually default to a standard VGA driver and allow the system to start at which time you can make the needed changes.
If you have the old video card, I'd leave it in the machine until it can be uninstalled correctly. The goal is to get the system to boot and the less that is changed increases your chances for success. This is not a requirement, as you will likely be able to uninstall catalyst (ati) or nforce (nVidia) drivers after the fact without issues, so it's up to you.
Thanks Shadowsports, that is helpful. I am putting the MB in a new case so I think I will put the new video card in. Hope that will work. If not I can switch back to the old card. Old card is ati and new card is nVidia.
My suggestion would be to use the old Video card until after the system boots up (after restore using Universal Restore) just a Shadowsports suggests. I have seen several issues when the Video driver/utilities caused system boot issues, esp. when switching between ATI and NVidia or vice versa. After the system boots successfully, You would then use Control Panel the remove the old ATI catalyst Control Center and all related ATI drivers/services, shut down the system, remove the ATI card and install the NVidia card, and any NVidia drivers/utilities.
On some systems this is not possible, (such as system that have onboard video), as a workaround, you can start Windows with a standard VGA driver to allow the opportunity to remove the offending software/drivers/services of the old Video hardware.
100% agree. Morrie, the less that's changed, the better for you. You're going to have to uninstall the old vid drivers anyway... having the old card in there when the machine starts might be a little more "friendly" from a windows standpoint. Don't give it too many things to think about (smile)
The new MB is the ASRock Z77 Extreme6TB4. It has a on board D-Sub Port (VGA1). Should I just use that without any vid card installed and then delete the old ati drivers, after that install the nVidia card and new drivers? Just trying to make it easy.
Or, is it still best to put the old card in?
Either way should work. ATI Catalyst Control Center and its related drivers/services can be un-installed without the ATI card present.
I would definitely not install the NVidia card until everything else is resolved. Do it last.
Thanks James F and Shadowsports. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
I just got the new MB and there are many drivers in the driver folder on the ASRock MB install Disk. All of the different drivers (some of which are self extracting) are buried within multiple subfolders. I am going to use a external USB drive with my sys backup, as well as the new drivers needed, for the universal update. I know I need the chipset and disk controllers. Do I also need the new USB drivers?
MOST IMPORTANT is if these drivers are deep within subfolders will Acronis be able to find them for the install? If not, I am not too sure which drivers should be in the single folder I point Universal Update to.
For Universal Restore to work, you need to uncompress all the drivers, you don't need to organize them, they can all be in the same folder. Typically drivers files can be driver files (.sys), driver setup files (.inf), pre-compiled INF files(.pnf), maybe some XML file that contains the manifest of all the files within the driver package. ATI will sort it out, but the most critical are the .inf and corresponding .sys files.
How do I uncompress the compressed drivers on my old sys (Asus) without them self installing on that sys? If they do self install on the old system will that corrupt the system and windows 7? I need to keep the old sys working untill I install the new MB and do the Universal Restore.
Morrie,
Did you try to open the exe with your favorite ZIP utility?
I tried winrar and it would not work.
You might want to google this up. There are plenty of tools to open and inspect .exe files.
Another way I got there was to launch the exe and not proceed through the installation wizard. Depending on the package and the installation process, you might have a step after the decompressing (in a temp directory or a user selected directory) and before the actual installation (for example, the installer might be asking for language option, or some other installation parameter). THis gives you an opportunity to go to the decompression folder and copy the files out, then cancel the installation. If you let the installation finish, the temp files might be deleted. This method requires you to know the behavior of the installer, so I know this is not perfect :-)
Some driver packages also have command line options that can be used to extract the contents directly. For example, Intel routinely provides command line options to do just that. Each manufacture implements this differently (or not at all). Additionally, many manufactures provide separate downloadable driver packages for "floppy disk installation" of the drivers during Windows installations. These are usually provided as a zip file, or an executable file that can be used to extract the drivers onto a floppy (or into a folder on a hard disk) and can be used for Universal Restore purposes. The best place to start for drivers for your system is on the manufacturers website. They would have the most current drivers they support from your system, and sometimes have driver packages that can be extracted as discussed here, instead of only the automated driver installation programs common on some of the CD/DVD's supplied with the system. You can also download drivers directly from each of the hardware/chipset manufactures (Intel, AMD, Marvel, ASMedia, etc.) if you know what drivers are needed.
A general method to check whether or not a particular .exe file has command line options available, is to open a command prompt, navigate to the folder that contains the .exe file, and type the name of the .exe file and follow it with any one of the following:
exefilename.exe ?
exefilename.exe /?
exefilename.exe help
exefilname.exe /help
Substitute "exefilename.exe" with the name of the .exe file you are testing for command line options.
Still no luck. Tried Universal Extractor on data1 in the Intel install package for the MB and that did not work.
Doesn't Intel provide the "F6" drivers in a ZIP format on their web site?