Tonight I installed a new mother board in my PC. It's a MSI Z77A-G45. I was constantly having crashes while gaming when I used newer video cards. I currently have an Asus R8 280X. A tech support company could find nothing wrong, so I decided to switch out boards to one with a PCI-E 3.0 slot. My issue I am having is knowing if I have to do a fresh Windows 7 install. When I try to power up my PC, I get stuck in a restart loop. I get the point where it says "Starting Windows" before the PC restarts and I have to choose the option to start windows normally. Thanks for reading!
Yes you will need to reinstall Windows. Assuming SATA mode is the same as your old board in BIOS (AHCI or IDE). It's quite rare to change chipset on Intel boards and not have to reload.
With my 2700k. I have used four different boards from a p67 sabertooth to a maximum formula v ad's I have never reinstalled Windows. Maybe I have been lucky. But with the problems you have been having I would do a fresh install.
He's using win 7 Anyway some people do get away with not reinstalling the OS but tbh it's bad practice and normally leads to problems later on.
I went with another MSI board hoping I would not have to do a fresh install. I have like 30 games installed I don't want to have to put back on lol