HI there. I am frequently in the exact same situation that you describe - I=20 work on PCs for friends, family, and friends with small businesses. I consistently get the best results when I do a complete clean=20 install of the OS. I purchase new mobo, processor, hard drive and=20 optical drive. I get new drives for a couple of reasons: 1) The optical drive in most of the PCs that I work on are IDE and=20 most new mobo's are SATA only; 2) I like to leave the existing data alone on the original=20 drive. This makes things easier when I'm migrating data and provides=20 a backup in case something goes wrong. And - many of those hard=20 drives are again IDE, which the new mobo won't support. I've had essentially zero problems in transferring the current=20 license from the old mobo to the new unit. Sometimes a phone call to=20 Microsoft is needed if the OS doesn't activate cleanly but MS has=20 always given a new key when needed. FWIW - I always set up two partitions on the system: the OS partition=20 is relatively small and the Data partition is the remainder of the=20 drive space. I also create a directory on the new Data partition=20 called "@Documents" and move each user's Documents folders to that=20 new directory. Finally, I keep purchasing licenses for Acronis True Image Home when=20 they go on sale. When I'm finished with a machine, I install a copy=20 of Acronis and image the drive that I have now finished setting up so=20 carefully. A copy of that image lives in the Data partition in a=20 folder called "Backups". Acronis is also set up to run as part of the boot process - when=20 installed that way, a brief message pops up while booting saying=20 "Press F11 for Acronis Recovery". This lets me help someone recover=20 from an "Oops" by being able to talk them through the OS partition=20 recovery over the telephone. That's the main reason that I move each user's Documents folder to=20 the Data partition - I never have to worry about trying to talk=20 someone through backing up their data before blowing away the current=20 OS partition. dwayne At 12:32 AM 1/30/2013, Luis Moreira wrote: >Hi Guys, >My main PC at home, which is about four years old and running windows 7, i= s >slowly developing faults as time goes by and I think it is time to get a >new motherboard for it. >My question is, if I fit a new mother board with probably new processor an= d >memory do I have to do a clean installation of windows7. I really don't >want to do that... >Thanks. >Best Regards --=20 Dwayne Reid Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax www.trinity-electronics.com Custom Electronics Design and Manufacturing --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .