True unless he was running raid which no one seems to thought about and only other reason be if the HDD were in ACHI or IDE or even raid with that current mobo. a new intel chipset should be a none issue as long it was no raid setup and he picks the same HDD mode (IDE\ACHI) which i think were people have the main issue.
Do you know "restore anywhere"? With my old version of Backup Exec desktop edition, I could migrate an simple OS on a IDE drive to a RAID 0...
With the right software, you can do anything
Using Paragon Partition manager Server 10 or 11, which you can inject drivers into the partition. You can boot on the CD, load drivers than restore image. Did it when I swaped from my RAID 1 250gb to my Crucial M4 64gb
For those who thinks an old OS is slow, this is because you scrap your OS... Don't use software like CCleaner to "repair" your registry, don't install shit, and when you uninstall, remove registry shit from that software, defrag your disk (if no SSD) and do your updates!
I had Win Vista x64 SP2 for 2 years on my last system, OS was fast like when I installed it.
@happita
You will like your system xD, SSD is soo much faster than an hard drive!