[RESOLVED] Copying OS from one PC to another

[jmsrickland]

How can I do this?

I have a PC with XP Pro/SP2 and all my files, programs, installations, etc, etc.

I just bought a newer PC and now I want it to be my primary PC (to replace the above one with the existing OS).

I don't want to rebuild the OS as that would be a task just too much involved so I would like to just have an exact copy of the existing one on the other PC.

[RobDog888]

You could use Ghost to copy one drive to another.

[jmsrickland]

Actually I know how to copy from one drive to another but what I need to do is make a copy of the OS, as is, and have it run on the other PC. I think there might be a problem here with that.

[AsmIscool]

You might start having all sorts of strange driver gremlins if you go that path. I tried it once before and it would have been a whole lot easier to just load the OS from scratch. Sorry.

[mendhak]

Unless the two PCs have the exact same build and configuration, you will need to reinstall and go through the entire arduous process of setting everything up. You could, however, copy the user settings from one PC to another in the sense that the Documents and Settings\username folder contains some of your profile information.

[Lerroy_Jenkins]

mendhak is right, the two computers have to be exact (With a minor few exceptions I have noticed) in order for Ghost to work.

I would suggest re-installing windows I am affraid, you can go down the road of creating your own windows installation CD which has alot of your settings pre-configured, but since I doubt you will be installing it again within a few months that might not be a good idea.

[jmsrickland]

Tha't what I was afraid of. The two PCs are completely different.

So, what about this. I copy the original hard drive verbatum to another hard drive and then re-install XP on top of the second drive. Now I copy over the folder 'Program Files' and the entire registry from the first drive. Will I be able to keep everything I have installed or am I going to have a big mess here?

[Lerroy_Jenkins]

That is a very big mess, I wouldn't do that!

By the looks of it Mendhak was correct, the only sensible thing is to reintisall it all, and then copy over Docs and Settings im affraid.

[penagate]

You will have a big mess which is unlikely to even boot.

Using sysprep you can copy an OS to another machine that uses the same HAL. If your computers are very different you may not have success but it is worth a shot.
This is an excellent guide which will get you started:
http://vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/index.shtml

You will also need an imaging tool such as Ghost to actually effect the copy.

[vbcode1980]

I have used Acronis TrueImage a couple of times to create images of pc's and restore them on a different pc.

You'll have to install drivers for the new hardware, but it worked pretty well.
It's not a good as doing a fresh install of course.

[drivenbywhat]

I don't think you can if the PCs are different. I believe MS implemented this so its OS would be harder to bootleg. You should just try to clone the drive and put it in the new pc and see what happens. Then you can tell us the outcome. If it doesn't work then your old hard drive is still okay. Who knows, it might boot up and just tell you that the key doesn't match and perhaps you can call MS to tell them your situation and have your key reset.

[Lord Orwell]

as long as you have the original xp disk, you can clone the drive. After you install it in the new computer, boot from the OS cd and choose a "repair" install. This will install a new hardware abstraction layer suited for the new system. You will keep all data and all programs that were installed will remain installed.

[jmsrickland]

Let me see if I got this right.

I take the existing XP system and copy it to a second hard drive. I mount the second hard drive on the newer PC. I put the XP Installation CD in the newer PC and boot from the CD. Now, instead of selecting install new system I select repair. This should now install a new hardware abstraction layer for the newer PC and everything that was on the original OS will remain intact. Am I understanding what you say correctely?

[jmsrickland]

Well I guess I didn't understand what you said. Here is what I did.

1) Mount hard drive with copy of old XP onto new PC

2) Put the XP install CD into the CD_ROM

3) Booted from CD

4) When prompt appeared.....
To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R

5) I pressed R

6) Following appeared on screen:
Microsoft Windows XP(TM) Recovery Console.
The Recovery Console provides system repair and recovery functionality.
Type EXIT to quit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.

1: C:\WINNT

Which Windows installation would you like to log onto (To cancel, press Enter)?

I assume the only thing I can do is to enter a '1' and press enter so I did

7) 1 (enter)

Type the administrator password:

There is no password so I just press enter

8) <enter>

9) C:\WINNT>

That's it. All I get is a DOS prompt with normal DOS commands.

So what? That doesn't do anything about what you said. Exactly what am I supposed to do at this point?

I removed the CD and booted from hard drive. Nothing happened. Everything the same as before.

So either I completely misunderstood you or you don't know what you are talking about.

[penagate]

I don't think Lord Orwell meant the recovery console. I think he meant to proceed with the normal installation option but then select 'Repair' when prompted about an existing installation of Windows.

[jmsrickland]

I have tried something like that in the past and seem to remember that it asked me for my recovery disc which I don't have one. I only have the XP installation CD, nothing else. So are you saying that if I do what you posted I will or will not be asked to mount my recovery disk?

[penagate]

I have done it several times and have never been prompted for a recovery disk.

[jmsrickland]

Nothing like that appeared. All that took place was that installation said I have an existing OS and do I want to either install a new OS in the same partition or a different partition. Nothing like Repair appeared. My only options were either same or different partitions (by selecting a letter). Then it asked me if I wanted to leave the existing file format as is.

So, exactly where does this Repair prompt come up? All that I could see was that if I had continued on it was going to install a new OS on top of the old one, which of course I don't want.

[RobDog888]

With the amount of time spent on this thread you could have reinstalled xp and had transfered your settings and installed your apps.

The Repair option should appear when you are prompted for new installation or repair.

What happens when you just boot it up? It should just prompt for new hardware found, install relevant drivers and perhaps reactivation of XP. How did you copy the files over to the new HD?

[jmsrickland]

With the amount of time spent on this thread you could have reinstalled xp and had transfered your settings and installed your apps.

The Repair option should appear when you are prompted for new installation or repair.

What happens when you just boot it up? It should just prompt for new hardware found, install relevant drivers and perhaps reactivation of XP. How did you copy the files over to the new HD?

Absolutely NO to your first statement. My existing OS is hugh and I will try many things before I install a new OS and then transfer over all my files, installation, settings, etc, etc.

Time spent asking is better than time wasted doing a new install and then run into too many problems which in the end will cost you dearly. I've been there before and regretted it.

To your second statement, the Repair option did not appear when I was prompted for a new installation. I went through the process three times and at no time did I get a prompt about Repair. I only got a prompt about do I want to install over the existing partition and lose the files already there or do I want to install on a different partition. Nothing else was asked.

To your third statement.

It wouldn't boot at all. It just went around and around in circles trying to boot then black out then try to boot again, black out again, try to boot again, etc, etc over and over.

I copied the old OS to a different hard drive using a DOS utility application that copied partition to partition. I know it did a good copy because the new copied OS ran exactly the same on the old PC as the original OS did on the same PC.

[RobDog888]

Have you tried / tested it on your original system? The repair option is there but for whatever reason its not under these circumstances, it may be by design and may never appear.

Even with my large system it only takes less then a day (if I opt to do it all in one sitting) to reinstall, tweak, install programs and copy over saved data. But this is what I base my statement off of but it shouldnt vary more then a day or two unless you have a very very slow system.

[jmsrickland]

I may have to wind up doing it just that way but it scares me. I did this once before and I got into so many different problems it totally blew my mind and I wound up just dropping the whole thing and I literally started all over again.

What I don't understand is how do you get all of your installed applications over to the new PC if you don't have the installation CDs? I have tons of stuff I installed on the old PC from the Internet and have no idea where I got them or remember how I installed them (years ago). Don't you have to copy over the old registry to preserve your installs?

[RobDog888]

Ah so that is the main reason for not reinstalling. I have all my cds and for the downloads I have bought I have them in my Downloads folder which is also backed up. Plus the apps usually email the serial numbers etc so reinstalling is not a prob. I never install from the internet but rather opt to save/download so I have it archived before installing.

In your case its going to be much harder since a programs registry entries may be more then simple and then there is the dependancy files for it in the System32 directory. You dont want to bring over all of them but perhaps copy over the ones that popup from error when attempting to run your app(s).

[Lord Orwell]

You have a 2nd option. You can put the hard drive back in the original computer and after booting into windows, go to device manager and change the hard drive controller to generic. It should be able to boot in the new computer then. After that you can install the correct drivers.

[jmsrickland]

.....change the hard drive controller to generic....

What do you mean by that? I don't see anything that allows you to change the hard drive to generic. I see where I can uninstall the drive and I see where I can update the drivers but I don't see where I can change it to generic.

[jmsrickland]

OK, I think I am begining to see a pattern here. Now I am not positive but I think I know something about what is going on.

I have several XP systems on several hard drives from the old PC. Some of the systems are on a single partition disk while others are on a two-partitioned disk.

Everytime I mount a two-partition disk; 1st partition being the XP OS and the 2nd partition being used for data, I never get that option to repair the existing XP installation but when I mount the single partition disks I do get that option.

Here's how it goes.

Mount a two partition disk with the OS on the 1st partition.
XP Installer does not see the existing XP (or if it does it doesn't say so)
I get the following screen:

The following list shows the existing partitions and unpartitioned space on the computer.

Use the UP and DOWN ARROW Keys to select an item in the list.
> To set up Windows XP on the selected item, press ENTER
> To create a partition in the unpartitioned space, press C
> To delete the selected partition, press D

+------------------------------------------------------------+
| nnnnnn MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]           |
|  C: Partition1 <DRV1_VOL1>[NTFS]  nnnnnn MB <nnnn MB Free> |
|  D: Partition2 [NTFS]             nnnnnn MB <nnnn MB Free> | 
+------------------------------------------------------------+

As you can see from the above there is no way to do a Repair. Those are my only choises. If I select ENTER it will install a new installation on top of the old one.

Now, on the other hand, if I mount a single partition disk I get the following screen:

If one of the following Windows XP installations is damaged, Setup can try to repair it.

Use the UP and DOWN ARROW Keys to select an installation.
> To repair the selected Windows XP installation, press R
> To .....bla bla bla bla........................................

+----------------------------------------------------+
| C:\WINDOWS "Microsoft Windows XP Professional"     |
+----------------------------------------------------+

This occurs everytime for whichever disk I mount on the new PC.

So, that maybe explains why I wasn't getting the repair option because the XP I was trying to copy over to the newer PC was a copy of the original one but it was copied on a two-partitioned disk. Fortunantly, the original XP OS is on a single partition disk.

I made a new XP installation on the old PC and added some stuff and installed a piece of software so I could test it. I then mounted that drive on the newer PC and booted from the XP install CD. When I got to the part about repairing the existing installation I pressed R.

XP installer started to delete a bunch of files and DLL's and then loaded a bunch of different ones and then it went into the normal installation steps (just like it was installing a new OS). After about 30 minutes it booted up the old XP system from the old PC on the newer PC. Everything was exactly as it was on the old PC. So, this pretty much proves to me that Lord Orwell in his first reply (which I misunderstood, sorry) was right.

Well, that pretty much wraps this little problem up.

Thanks all for your help and especially to Lord Orwell since his was the one that really solved this problem for me.

[Lord Orwell]

that was a beautiful thing you said. Ratings are appreciated.

Anyway, here's what you do to install a generic hard drive driver:
Choose "update driver"
choose "display all compatible drivers for this device"
it should show something in the list named similar to generic hard drive controller.

Note that this method is NOT foolproof. I don't think it will properly boot if there is a huge chipset difference. The major problem in switching hard drives like this however is the fact there is no driver installed for the current hard drive controller, therefore it can't find the hard drive to finish booting once it gets to a certain part.

[drivenbywhat]

Too bad I wasn't updated by email about this thread. I could have answered your questions regarding the repair option. Yeah, you don't choose to repair from the recovery console. You just choose to install. Then it will show your partition with win xp. You have the choice of creating a new partition or installing in the same one. If you install in the same one it will give you the option of repair. Then it goes through the installation for about 30 minutes but doesn't ask you for things like "what would you like to name your pc". Oh well.