Swapping Motherboards - No More Nail Biting!

Swapping motherboards in a existing computer is nothing to be relished. Driver incompatibilities will drive you to chew your nails off.

Fear no more.

The HIR (Hardware Independent Restore) feature in the ShadowProtect IT 3.o Edition is marvelous! But it can be used in a case where you did not backup an image.

I had a client that had a computer go to electric heaven this week. Just the motherboard stopped working. The hard drive was replaced within the last four months. Told the client today that I would build them a new computer and have it ready with all the employee's stuff on it before the employee returns from vacation on Tuesday. There is just one problem.

EQK! I am leaving for WWPC in Denver on Sunday.

How could I get this done in time? StorageCraft to the rescue. I had a revelation earlier this week. Since ShadowProtect HIR has a mode to allow it to work on the image after it is restored, I could use it to change and match drivers on hard drives without restoring an image!

That fit my current situation. I ran by my favorite component distributor just before they closed on Friday and picked up all the parts for a new computer except the hard drive. I constructed the new computer and transferred the old hard drive to the new computer. I booted from the IT Edition cd and used HIR to replace the drivers. I only used drivers that were a fair match or higher. The network card and audio card showed no driver matches, so I did not replace the drivers. A quick reboot and Voila! Windows XP booted on the new motherboard. I then ran the drivers cd for the new motherboard.

What a relief! I will hand the computer to my backup tech tomorrow night at dinner and he will install it on Monday for me while I am hobnobbing at the Small Business Symposium :^).

Wow! A quick switch of all hardware except the hard drive, a HIR config, load some drivers, and now a network station from a SBS network is ready to go back on the network WITHOUT any additional configuration! And I still have my nails!