Switching motherboards

[squishy]

My current motherboard appears to be dying, with my only operational drive chockablock with stuff I cannot lose, so unfortunately formatting is simply not an option. I bought a new motherboard to temporarily use while my ASUS is being examined etc (3 years warranty ftw).

Though now comes the task of switching motherboards, without Windows crying and not wanting to play, which I've read and heard is rather difficult, so any help here is appreciated, so far my option is to use the sysprep tool to strip Windows of certain drivers and give it an OOBE.

Can you guys think of any other options I have? Also, experience, tips, etc with sysprep appreciated

Also, how do I find out the HAL and ACPI of the two motherboards?

Cheers in advance

[awm]

Get another hard drive (even small and old), install windows onto it and then hook up you current drive AND BACK UP THE FILES YOU CARE ABOUT. You then can reformat the main drive and reinstall and as a bonus you'll have the backups you should have.

[dodgybob]

Agreed, either get a 2nd drive to backup the files you care about or get a dvd burner and a big stack of discs. This data is clearly very important to you and not worth risking.

[awm]

To quote what I believe was a Retrospect ad "to move forward you must backup".

[alsenior]

i recently removed an ic7-max3 and put in a msi 865pe. all i needed to do was to install the drivers for the new board. it didn't even skip a heart beat