Motherboard has died

[statalite]

I would try this before wiping as a last resort
HowTo: Repair Windows 7 Install After Replacing Motherboard - Dowd and Associates

I just followed these instructions today and to my delight they worked, after a bit of tinkering, so thank you.
It boots now and works like it should without me wiping (took about the same time but no need to move big video files now)

 

[statalite]

After reading the SSD thread I'm tempted to get one.
My new £25 motherboard will be SATA2, but I didn't see anything in the BIOS about AHCI, will AHCI be crucial to have?

 

[Luke61]

ahci offers the fastest speeds but unfortunately your mobo does not support ahci. you can still use the ssd with it and it will run perfectly fine its just that you will lose a bit of speed but it will be faster than a regular hdd and the speed difference will probably be noticed just in benchmarks anyway