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I just did a fairly significant hardware upgrade while keeping my hard disks. The old system was a dell Optiplex 745 with an Intel Core 2 duo, LGA 775. The new system is custom built, Intel i5 750.

I know you're supposed to do a clean install with a hardware upgrade like this, but I'd had success in the past doing the stealth hardware upgrade like this, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit gets through the loading screen and immediately blue screens and reboots.

Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit, which I have on an old hard drive from an AMD box (!!) loads up fine.

I ran through the windows memory checker just to be sure, and my memory is fine.

So, is the BSOD the result of some sort of protection mechanism specific to Windows 7? Is there any hope of salvaging that install?

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  • have you upgraded your powersupply ?
    – Sathyajith Bhat ♦
    Jan 7, 2010 at 8:51
  • No, but it should be more than adequate... it's like 750w or something ridiculous.
    – Daniel Schaffer
    Jan 7, 2010 at 16:27
  • @Daniel - OK. I'd start with updating the Motherboard BIOS.
    – Sathyajith Bhat ♦
    Jan 7, 2010 at 21:18

4 Answers 4

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The procedure I've heard people use for this kind of upgrade is before the move the drive to the new computer they go into the device manager and remove all the devices that would be changing (CPU, hard drive controller, video card, sound card, clocks, USB ports, everything). Then shutdown the computer and transfer the drive. When Windows boots, it will want to detect the hardware. You will probably need the CD for the drivers. I hope that helps.

I don't fully understand how the Vista 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit fit into the hardware upgrade, so I can help you there.

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Have you tried the upgrade adviser for Win 7 from the working instance of Vista 32bit? May be it will give you clues as to the hardware?

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Sounds to me like a 64-bit driver issue.

Press F8 just after your computer POSTs and before the Windows loading screen shows up to get to the advanced boot menu. Select "Disable Automatic Restart" so that you are able to see the blue screen once the system crashes (this will stop the system from rebooting as soon as the crash happens).

Reboot and let us know what the BSOD shows.

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This one ended up needing a clean install.

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    I know we're 1.5 years out here, but since it's bumped, I called Microsoft to try to do the same thing (CPU, MB, RAM), and they assured me it would never work.
    – apathos
    Aug 8, 2011 at 2:18
  • Well FWIW, I switched from Intel hardware to AMD hardware on a Windows XP installation ~2005-ish and it worked without any issues.
    – Daniel Schaffer
    Aug 8, 2011 at 2:32

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