Retriving Old Settings From Windows XP To Vista

Shades799

Hi All,

I have a Dell Inspiron 5150 since June 04'. I know there have been some problems with it with over heating etc... but in the main it is a great laptop that lasted me a long time.

However I decided to buy a new Dell Inspiron 1525 with windows Vista. I wrote a bit of software for a fella and I am on a retainer to support it. Therefore I wanted to keep the old laptop so I could use it for maintenance to the program.

Now I have an external hard drive that I had been using to back up my system settings on the XP laptop using the Windows XP backup software. However when I was moving across my personal data (pictures, music etc) I deleted this back up (very stupidly) so that I could have more space to move the data across.

Typically Murphy's Law came into play and a day after I had move across my data my old XP died on me. It no longer boots up, it doesn't even reach POST. It just powers on, the hard drive and DVD spins but all that is on the screen is a blinking cursor in the top left of the screen.

I have done lots of research, I have swapped around my RAM and followed every other bit of advice I could find but to no avail. So it appears it is a mother board problem.

I have ordered a new mother board but while this is coming I need to be able to boot up my old system to fix an urgent problem with the program I have written.

I was able to connect my XP's laptop's hard drive to my new Vista laptop using an external connection I have and all the data is still there and is fine.

Hardware isn't my strong point so I was wondering is there anyway I could boot up my Vista laptop (or even another laptop) with the settings that were on my old XP laptop?

The settings that I am mostly concerned about are the registry settings and the Windows Environment Variables.

Many thanks for any help you can give. It is really appreciated.

batman2000

Quote "...I was wondering is there anyway I could boot up my Vista laptop (or even another laptop) with the settings that were on my old XP laptop?..."

Not entirely sure what you mean by "settings". If you boot your Vista laptop with a HDD with Vista OS installed. The enviroment settings etc will be based on Vista. Same way if you install a HDD with XP OS installed your settings will be based on XP.

The enviroment settings are unique to Vista and XP respectively. What you can do (if they are both the same form factor) Is put the XP HDD into the new laptop and see if it can boot up, as the Motherboard is faulty and not the HDD.

Shades799

batman2000 wrote: »

Not entirely sure what you mean by "settings".

A simple example would be if I had two XP laptops working perfectly. Laptop A had registry settings and windows environment variables set to X and Laptop B had registry settings and windows environment variables set to Y.

If I put the hard drive from Laptop A into Laptop B. I would still expect Laptop B's registry settings and windows environment variables to still be set to Y.

Is this correct?

If it is correct then I want to know is there a way that I can move the entire settings across to a new laptop. i.e. My ideal scenario is I could boot up Laptop B and everything would be exactly the same as it was in Laptop A.

Hope this makes sense?

There are further complications in that in my case Laptop A won't boot up but I just want to find out if it is possible to do this first of all.

Cheers for the help

astrofool

What was the software written in? The registry in Vista will have changed in format from XP, so just applying the settings will not do anything, and likely leave you with a broken Vista. Environment variables can be easily set, but you need to know the old variables first.

Booting off the old drive with the new laptop likely won't work either due to the massive change in hardware between the two (incidentally, going the other way, Vista is better at re-recognising hardware).

Any dev worth his salt should be able to get the old dev environment up, running and compiling, given the source code and dependent dll's.

Shades799

I wrote the program in VB.NET using Microsoft Visual Studio 2003. And yes you are correct. I would be able to set the environment variables handily enough (after I went back and figured out what I needed to set) but because the customer is still using Windows XP I would rather have my machine set-up like the customers machines for a more reliable testing process.

macrubicon

You could pull out the drive from the "old" laptop and create a virtual machine from it on the vista laptop using Microsoft Virtual PC ( free download )

Not sure how to go about it from a "drive image" rather than an actual PC though.

Would give you your XP environment on the Vista Laptop...

Overheal

Files and Settings Transfer Wizard

macrubicon

Overheal wrote: »

Files and Settings Transfer Wizard

You need the "old" machine running for that to work - works well too. The OP's "old" laptop does not boot...

Shades799

That is correct. The files and settings transfer wizard is actually a great piece of software but I very stupidly deleted my 38GB backup because I wanted more space on my external hard drive to move across my personal files as mentioned above. That's why I'd love to get my machine back up and running and run the transfer wizard again to back it up.

As for VMing the machine. I was talking to a mate of mine that's into hardware and that's looking like a good solution. My only worry would be is the Virtual Machine going to look and behave exactly like the old one did?

The Insider

If I am understanding you correctly then all you need to do is remove the hard drive from your new laptop and put in the hard drive from the old laptop into it and just power it on. Everything is contained on the hard drive and if its just a motherboard problem on the other laptop then the new laptop will boot into the XP OS with everything exactly the same.

Swapping out the hard drives is very easy to do. If you are unsure on what to do just have a dig around on the Dell website and see if you can find the user manual.

Shades799

That is exactly what I want to do and I am able to swap around the hard drives but I was told that that might cause problems because my new PC is a vista PC?

macrubicon

It's only the OS that Vista.

You can put the "old" drive into the new laptop if it fits no problems. Make sure you download all the XP drivers for the new laptop from Dell and have them to hand ( preferably extracted ) on a USB key or similar and you should be OK.

You would face some of the same issues with drivers in VM'ing but they are all available too.

Shades799

OK that's interesting, I'll have a look at that tonight. Is there a place that I can go to and just say download all required XP drivers?

Many thanks for everyone's help. It is much appreciated.

macrubicon

Aye...

http://support.euro.dell.com is the site. Stick in the Tag number of the New Laptop and go to download drivers. From here you can choose XP as the OS.

You don't need to worry about everything. Download the basics ( Motherboard, NIC, Video ) and then get it back online to do the rest.

Shades799

macrubicon,

Cheers, this looks great. So what I intend to do now is log onto my vista laptop, download all the necessary drivers for the XP laptop onto an USB key that I have.

Then put the XP hard drive into the vista laptop. Boot up, follow all on screen instructions and when the whole process is done hopefully my new laptop will look and feel exactly like my old laptop.

I'll give it a lash and let you know how I get on.

Cheers again.

jor el

Shades799 wrote: »

macrubicon,

Cheers, this looks great. So what I intend to do now is log onto my vista laptop, download all the necessary drivers for the XP laptop onto an USB key that I have.

Then put the XP hard drive into the vista laptop. Boot up, follow all on screen instructions and when the whole process is done hopefully my new laptop will look and feel exactly like my old laptop.

That should work perfectly. XP was the first Windows that could transfer across hardware easily enough. Previous versions needed a re-install, but I've seen XP handle major hardware changes without a re-install. All that will happen is it will detect all the new hardware. Some will probably need the drivers from Dell, others will auto install with the built in XP drivers.

batman2000

Overheal wrote: »

Files and Settings Transfer Wizard

Can this be used if the "old" PC is XP and the "new" pc is Vista.......
If so, I am assuming you can use a crossover RJ45 cable