Windows 7 SWAPPING MBs

[BeanerECMO]

Current System:
Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) (build 7600)
Install Language: English (United States)
HP-Pavilion RK574AA-ABA a1730n
Enclosure Type: Desktop / uATX
Board: ASUSTek Computer INC. A8M2N-LA (NodusM3) 1.05
Processor: 2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT w/1GB VRAM

I'm upgrading (of sorts) to:
M4A78LT-M - uATX
AM3 Phenom II X6 1055T (Six-Core)
(Dual channel 4 DDR3 1800+ (O.C.) ; 8Gb RAM
2.8GHz
6 x 512KB L2 Cache
6MB L3 Cache
45nm
125W
HyperTransport technology
Integrated memory controller
AMD Virtualization
64-Bit
HDMI/DVI/RGB Interface Support
ASUS EPU

What I want to do is minimize reloading everything. Is it possible (reasonable, no-way José) to swap the MBs and fire it up without too much tinkering? They are both ASUS MBs. Could I clone and restore? Is that approach reasonable? Or, is it best to start cleanly? I do understand the issues re: licensing, etc. I will contact MS receive their 'blessing' one way or the other.

 

[Geralt]

It would be 'possible' but you'll need to reinstall all the drivers, especially for the motherboard and on-board features, since it looks like the chipsets of the 2 boards are different. To prevent issues from cropping up down the line, I strongly suggest that you back up all your data and do a clean install on a freshly formatted HDD since this seems to be a major upgrade.

Recently, I swapped out my Asus P8P67 mobo under the Intel Sandy Bridge recall scheme, but since the replacement mobo was exactly the same model (just a revision change), I was able to escape with no changes other than a reactivation of Windows, Office and a couple of games. Your case is slightly different.

 

[BeanerECMO]

Thanks. It was my conclusion as well. It's just so painstakingly slow; not even as good as watching paint dry. I' keep my data including the pst & rules and Norton 360 PWs & cards. Any other items?

 

[Highwayman]

stuff like saving the bookmarks from your browsers, save games, any documents and pictures, steam games can be backed up to spare drive and restored with no fuss if you have it too. On the upside a reinstall will be much faster on the new hardware, I recently did a wipe to swap my OS to raid mode, and took about 15mins to reinstall and get back to useable state to get the windows updates etc on.

 

[BeanerECMO]

It's always something - bookmarks. WRT games, fortunately I can download and install them again. All the other data are on a separate drive. I've been looking for the process to (somewhat) seamlessly transfer the OL 2010 rules. Do they come over with the outlook.pst (along with contacts, appointments, etc.)?