Cable Forum - View Single Post - How does Windows 7 handle Motherboard and CPU replacement?

Kymmy · 23-09-2011, 08:29

Yep, but the HAL is used on boot.. If the HAL gets it's knickers in a twist then it'll reboot the machine before it gets into windows so can't therefore look for the hardware changes.

It is one of the main drawbacks with windows in that it doesn't look for hardware changes on boot but instead after boot. With XP you could then boot from the CD, choose the 2nd repair option and it would reinstall keeping all your old settings/programs. Win7 and Vista did away with this option and just does a start-up/system file repair where it looks for corrupt or missing system files.. which isn;t much use if the system files are still configured for different hardware.

23-09-2011, 08:29	#14
Kymmy Inactive Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 18,385	Re: How does Windows 7 handle Motherboard and CPU replacement? Yep, but the HAL is used on boot.. If the HAL gets it's knickers in a twist then it'll reboot the machine before it gets into windows so can't therefore look for the hardware changes. It is one of the main drawbacks with windows in that it doesn't look for hardware changes on boot but instead after boot. With XP you could then boot from the CD, choose the 2nd repair option and it would reinstall keeping all your old settings/programs. Win7 and Vista did away with this option and just does a start-up/system file repair where it looks for corrupt or missing system files.. which isn;t much use if the system files are still configured for different hardware.