How does Vista handle replacement of motherboard/CPU?

I have a new motherboard and CPU arriving tonight - currently have a socket 939 board with an X2 processor, upgraded to a socket AM2+ board with a phenom 9850 quad core... older versions of windows have a horrible reputation for not working at all when the motherboard is replaced - how does vista handle it? Should I not even bother and just reinstall the whole OS, or will it pick up the new motherboard/hardware ok and keep working? (And will it require re-activation?). The new board has an entirely different north and south bridge as well which I'm thinking might cause serious issues.

Input appreciated, thanks.

Well for those wondering, I replaced my main board today with a totally different manufacturer and different north/south bridge chipset, and a quad core processor upgraded from a dual core. Surprisingly, Vista 64 booted and installed about 40 devices, then rebooted, and everything worked except windows was only seeing 2 cores still. I updated the BIOS, still only 2 cores, installed the latest chipset drivers from asrock.com, still 2 cores. Last I went into device manager, went under Processors, and uninstalled all 4 phenom 9850 devices and rebooted, it reinstalled them and I then saw all 4 cores. Dalaran is still a fairly low FPS (~20 on my main screen) but it is consistent, doesn't really drop below 20 and so I can be there and have no issues with follow, which is a huge relief. I imagine some issues I have in places like nexus with TONS of effects will be smooth now as well. Can't wait to start recording more heroics runs.

This is good to hear for when I upgrade to an i7 processor.

Changing the CPU is usually trivial (but may require a BIOS flash). Changing the motherboard is usually a sign that it's time to reinstall Windows.

I would first make sure that the BIOS has all of the CPUs enabled. ( sounds silly but baby steps )
did your motherboard come with any type of CDROM?

I have a feeling that Vista has a HAL (hardware abstraction layer) installed that is dedicated to dual core so it can't see more cores.
In a perfect world the plug & play should have detected the newer CPU/motherboard and tried to install a new HAL.
You should be able to upgrade the HAL although I'm not 100% sure how it's done.
You can try to use the device or hardware manager to upgrade your CPU driver or motherboard ( and thus get a newer HAL installed ).

and as someone else said, you can always start from scratch and re-install vista.
good luck

Im selling my 9550 quad core and buying a 6400 X2.

I am sure quad is worse for what we do.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/824/4/

Notice the 9600 slower then the 5000 and the clock rate on the 6400 is a lot more then the clock rate on the 5000.

But the i7 is the way to go.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Catamer',index.php?page=Thread&postID=171746#post 171746

I would first make sure that the BIOS has all of the CPUs enabled. ( sounds silly but baby steps )
did your motherboard come with any type of CDROM?

I have a feeling that Vista has a HAL (hardware abstraction layer) installed that is dedicated to dual core so it can't see more cores.
In a perfect world the plug & play should have detected the newer CPU/motherboard and tried to install a new HAL.
You should be able to upgrade the HAL although I'm not 100% sure how it's done.
You can try to use the device or hardware manager to upgrade your CPU driver or motherboard ( and thus get a newer HAL installed ).

and as someone else said, you can always start from scratch and re-install vista.
good luck

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Er.... did anyone read the actual post? I'm not having any issues with anything, I was simply stating that amazingly everything worked ok, and I detailed the steps I took to make everything work. As of my second post I wasn't actually asking any questions :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Hachoo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=172102#post1 72102

Er.... did anyone read the actual post? I'm not having any issues with anything, I was simply stating that amazingly everything worked ok, and I detailed the steps I took to make everything work. As of my second post I wasn't actually asking any questions :)

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This thread is classic! It's so common in forums that people write without reading. They answer a different question from the one that was asked, they argue against something that wasn't said, etc. But it's rarely so clear and vivid as in this thread. People like to talk more than they like to listen. (And I'm guilty too.)