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What is the best way to reinstall Windows after a MoBo/CPU upgrade while maximizing app/file/configuration retention? (lemm.ee)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I recently acquired a new MoBo, CPU, and RAM kit to upgrade my platform for the first time in just about a decade. What I failed to consider until now is the near requirement of a clean Windows install after the upgrade.

I want to retain as much of my personal files, installed software, Windows and Explorer settings, etc. as humanly possible after the reinstall, WITHOUT retaining any files/drivers that could possibly cause performance loss and/or conflicts. I also use Classic Shell, if that matters.

On Windows 10 Home x64, and my current C: drive is a 1TB SSD, and I plan on backing it up to a 4TB HDD I bought for data hording. GPU and other PCIe cards will remain the same, along with a stack of storage HDDs with various media files and installed software/games.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Honestly your probably fine to just leave your system drive as is. It's been a long time since mobo/cpu upgrades have broken a Windows install for me. My experience is Intel to Intel though, if your going to or coming from AMD then I'm less confident but still pretty sure you could get it working with safe mode and removing old chip set drivers. I would image the system drive to your 4TB drive or another SSD if you have one and just do the hardware upgrade

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Yeah, I’d definitely try just booting windows as is. Windows should detect change in hardware and simply pick the right drivers for the new system / hardware. If you go into device manager you can enable “show all devices”which will show the old hardware, you can remove those devices if you want but even that isn’t necessary/required