How to Switch Mobos w/o reinstalling Win 7 - Using DISM

[90sgamer]

Since my fathers computer died, I decided to give him my nforce 780i mobo, C2D and PSU.

 

It started booting up fine, but BSODed before booting completely. The problem was the previous board had a Intel X58 chipset and the current one has an older nForce 780i chipset. Win7 couldn't recognize the storage controller and was trying to use the Intel drivers. The result was a bricked system.

 

I researched for a couple days and tried many things, such as a popular batch file called fix_hdc.cmd (only to learn its only meant for XP & and windows PE environment with the correct SATA driver packages pre-installed -Which I didn't have setup at the time-). I tried looking for a setting to change SATA compatibility in the BIOS- no go. I was almost resigned that I would have to re-install windows on his machine, and backup all his data, reinstall all his programs... etc.

 

However, I started hearing about something called DISM. Deployment Image Servicing and Management - included in Windows 7. I guess it is meant for an administrator to use to prep Windows images for mass deployment by allowing offline (non-running) installation or removal of hotfixes, drivers, etc. I got an idea that this might be useful in my situation... I thought this might not work because I would be pointing to a HDD with Windows installed on it, not a Windows image file, but read on and see what happened...

 

I popped in a different HDD into the PC and installed Win 7 on it. I then got the SATA drivers I needed and put them on a flash drive (extracted, so the .inf file was accessible)

 

While booted into the new Win7 install with the old HDD attached as well, I ran opened an administrator command prompt and ran this:

 

C:\Windows\system32>DISM /image:F: /Add-Driver /driver:G:\driver\nvstor64.inf /ForceUnsigned

 

Where C: is my fresh Win7 install; F: is the old Win7 install; and G: is my flash drive with the driver on it (it was a modded driver, so it need the /ForceUnsigned switch.

 

It showed that the installation was successful and I shut down, unplugged the new hard drive and booted off the old one...

Tada! Booted up perfectly, installed more drivers, rebooted again, good as new !

 

Here's some links I used:

MSIGeek

Technet

 

Since I have been working on this all night, and it is now 5:25AM, I am going to bed. I hope this is comprehesible, because I am really tired !

 

Hope this helps anyone having a similar problem anyway!

Edited June 28, 2012 by 90sgamer