Anyone upgraded their main board?  Any license issues after it was done?

I'm upgrading this year from my AMD Phenom system to an Intel Ivy Bridge i5.  
Before I put in a new mobo, proc and memory, I'm wondering what effect this will have on all the licenses for win 7 and all the audio progs and VSTs?  All other components will stay the same.


UPDATE:  Windows 7 just needed to reactivate... Office, reactivate... X2, Reason, Reaper, Amplitube, many plugs are fine...no update needed, YET... I'll update if I hit any snags.

Recommend changing your Drive Controllers driver to a generic v 1.0 SATA driver before changing out a mobo.

you'll be fine with the cakewalk stuff..

other  makers use different settings / setup and perhaps check for modifications (propellerhead stuff does) 


since it's a different cpu, I'd do a fresh install and perhaps specific CPU drivers are loaded as part of windows

Do you have an Original Equipment Manufacturer version of Windows? This could actually matter to you. OEM licenses of Windows are usually incomplete installs by definition. If you have a full license for Windows, you'll be fine, but if you but a super cheap PC and plan to just put in a new Mother board and etc, frankly, historically this could be a problem. I don't know if it still could be. I never do this. No one in my family uses an OEM license. I'm also not really sure how to find out in advance of replacing all your internals whether your OEM version will handle it or not. I just don't know. And you usually can't return MOBOs etc. I wish you the best of luck. I'd say your worst case would require you to buy a full license for your version of Windows and use that license to get your gear working properly. Best case, you just boot to the new MOBO with your old hard drive and you're rocking.

OEM windows is as complete as any other, assuming it's not been altered by a PC manufacturer (e.g. it's a Microsoft Windows OEM disk, not a manufacturer's recovery/install disk which may have non-standard stuff in it).

However, the OEM license allows installation on only one PC. One way MS checks this is by tying the activation to the original cpu/motherboard, so installing a different motherboard may cause activation issues.

If that happens it's worth trying to activate Windows by telephone, explaining that you needed to replace the motherboard, but other than that the PC is the same one. I can't promise success, but it seem to have worked for at least some people.

If in doubt, try asking MS support for their view before changing anything.

well, this machine was not an oem version... full upgrade from XP.  I read somewhere, tho, that Win 8 oem is not what is used to be, but not going there cause my Saffire pro 24 does not work with Win 8 yet, and i'll lose some programs as well.  One thing at a time.  Sounds like my Reason will need re-validated.

Next step later next year is to go 64 bit Win 8...  big pain with licenses for daws and vsts mostly.

I realise that you aren't using an OEM version but FWIW........

I upgraded my complete system including the mobo about this time last year. I'd heard all sorts of horror stories about how hard it was going to be activating Windows 7 on a new build as it had already been used on an old one.

The only things that stayed from that build were one hard drive and the power supply, the rest was junked. Windows 7 installed and activated with no problems at all. That was an OEM x64 version and I am UK based which may make a difference as I understand the hoops that Microsoft think you should have to jump through to be called a "system builder" are pretty much defunct over here in the EU where you just need to er.... build a system.

It all depends on the software. Some check for network card MAC numbers, some check for hard drive serial numbers, some check for CPU serial numbers... others check for multiple things in the hardware.

So, you'll basically have to just try and install and see what happens. Worse case is that you have to reactivate everything, but as long as the vendor doesn't limit the number of activations, you should be fine. And even if they do, you should be able to contact them and most will allow you to activate again.

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

I once had to replace a defective motherboard in my DAW, and as a consequence had to re-authorize several plugins. 

This kind of took me by surprise, because I'd been upgrading systems for many years by replacing individual components - including motherboards - and never had any need to re-install or re-authorize any of my other software. It was only music-related software that gave me trouble. 
 
One vendor (Kjaerhus) was no longer in business, so I had no choice but to stop using that plugin. Another plugin (Amplitube) refused to re-authorize and kept complaining that it wasn't "installed properly", so I stopped using that one, too. But those were the only two that couldn't be brought back to life. SONAR and its bundled plugins were not a problem, and fortunately none of my most-used 3rd-party VSTs (e.g. Kontakt, Melodyne, Ozone, SampleTank) gave me any trouble.

There is no easy way to determine which of your plugins' licenses are tied to the motherboard short of contacting each of them and asking. But as long as all of your third-party vendors are still in business, you should be OK. Even those that limit the number of re-authorizations will help you out if you email them (not so sure about Waves, though).

bitflipper


I once had to replace a defective motherboard in my DAW, and as a consequence had to re-authorize several plugins. 

This kind of took me by surprise, because I'd been upgrading systems for many years by replacing individual components - including motherboards - and never had any need to re-install or re-authorize any of my other software. It was only music-related software that gave me trouble. 

One vendor (Kjaerhus) was no longer in business, so I had no choice but to stop using that plugin. Another plugin (Amplitube) refused to re-authorize and kept complaining that it wasn't "installed properly", so I stopped using that one, too. But those were the only two that couldn't be brought back to life. SONAR and its bundled plugins were not a problem, and fortunately none of my most-used 3rd-party VSTs (e.g. Kontakt, Melodyne, Ozone, SampleTank) gave me any trouble.

There is no easy way to determine which of your plugins' licenses are tied to the motherboard short of contacting each of them and asking. But as long as all of your third-party vendors are still in business, you should be OK. Even those that limit the number of re-authorizations will help you out if you email them (not so sure about Waves, though).

It depends on how the vendor has their copy protection scheme setup.
I've had some where it didn't matter what hardware you replaced on the DAW the software then had to be re-authorized.  Hard drives go bad and need to be replaced.  Even replacing with the exact same harddrive from the same manufacturer means having to re-authorize plugins because the serial number of the HD is different.  That one caught me way by surprise and thought they were being a bit over zealous.
 
Thankfully CW doesn't have any kind of copy protection like this.
 

Several Plugs could really killl your soul at this day...IK multimedia f.a.
But by all issues...
...if you change your motherboard...be sure it´s a much better idea to set the system also completely new up...
...a clean win 7 64bit is like "da Vincis" Mona Lisa...towards an "old Polaroid"...