Motherboard fried, new motherboard, disk driver issues, blue screen reboot time

So chaps and ladies, my motherboard went and died on me, it was out of
warranty and I now have a new motherboard. I have a dual boot XP and Vista
setup and both of them seem to be barfing quite nicely with the new
motherboard. I´ve solved the XP issue with a repair install, but the Vista
repair process does not appear to have the same procedure available, and
also it will not allow me to perform an "upgrade" over the old
install.....*grumbles*

So, is there anything I can do?

Hi Francis,

Nope, nothing else you can do when the hardware change is that drastic.
Vista's installation method differs significantly from XP and previous Win
versions in that it lays down an image rather than overwrite files. The
latter bit is why you can do repair installations of XP and earlier. Because
of this change, the repair installation is no longer available and you'll
have to lay down a new image. If you have sufficient drive space, you should
be able to do this without formatting so that you can recover data from the
old installation, it will be housed in a windows.old file on the root of the
drive.

Thankw for the prompt answer Rick. I really wish they had an F8 option that
did something along the lines of "default installation drivers" to get into
Windows with a forced hardware detection default type phase. I remember
loosing many hours with restoring an old Windows 2000 system back years ago
(in an emergency (of course)) that went from a single to a multiprocessor
setup and having to replace various files from the recovery console, but it
did work....

Not too worry, a clean installation is always a good thing, and then I fear
I will have my first contact with the License Activation people :) Oh
joy.... whinge whinge whinge :)

Vista's "repair install" is called an upgrade-in-place. However, it only
works if the desktop at least loads. It is done by launching Setup from the
desktop, choosing Install Now, and doing an upgrade. If the desktop does
not load then you will need to reinstall.

To protect your Vista VSS files from deletion by booting into XP follow this
KB.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/926185

So all of the best backup strategies in the world will probably be
useless if a mobo needs to be replaced and the same one can't be
found.

I guess you just have no clue about backup. People should back up their
data, not the OS. The OS can be installed on another machine but your data
can't be recreated if your hard drive dies.

If the MOBO dies, you can move the HDD to another machine as a slave drive
to salvage any data if you are STUPID enough NOT to make backups to begin
with.

I back it all up, doofus. I can restore all of it or any part of it
at will.

I can do that now, moron. You have any more useless crap to add?

You have no clue about what I know, doofus. My True Image backups can
be used to fully restore my system, or any part of it - at will.
[color=blue]

Why go to all that bother when True Image will restore any file/
directory I choose in my backup and will restore it to any place I
choose?

Go back to playing with your Vista-bashing and Ubuntu friends, you
twit. You fit in well in that group.

Acronis True Image with universal restore will restore to completely new hardware. You will have to reactivate.

VISTA WON'T DO REPAIR INSTALLATIONS if the system won't load, and it
won't load with a totally new motherboard in place.

Need help with understanding that?

i feel your pain francis, i was just upgrading my m/b from an intel
based chipset to a nVidia based one and Vista won't load. my WinXP on
the other hard drive that is slaved will tho. go figure. wish there was
a way to install the chipset drivers while in WinXP to the Vista OS.
someone should make a program for that, sure would make some money i
bet. good luck with yours, i'll be joining you in the "fresh install"
group.