Vista and hardware changes

[doug91]

I recently had to RMA my motherboard for a vista system. Apparently for some reason vista boots only off of the bios it was installed on. This is very annoying since now I will have to reinstall my OS and lose lots of files. Does anyone know a workaround so I don't have to reinstall Vista?

[mtekk]

It depends what went bad on your motherboard, you may actually get your original one back, that's what happened when I RMA'd two Gigabyte boards a year ago. They actually sent them back to Asia and took out the bad chip and soldered in a replacement. If that is what they do for you then you won't have to worry about it. Either way, still try booting when the board gets back, even if they replaced it, as long as it has the same chipset (northbridge) it should still boot, and if it wants to reactivate do the phone activation and explain your situation, they'll give you an activation key.

You should be able to install Vista without reformatting your hard drive, thus your data will remain intact and accessible, however you will have to reinstall your programs. One last option was available back during the betas there was a repair option or something like that for repairing an installation, if it still exists try that, it should do the trick.