can i create a ghost image of a pc, and copy to a new computer?

RoyalMarine

company computer running win xp32bit, and has some special software installed.

its not possible to get this software installation disk or file etc anymore and we cant loose it.

However, the computer is failing.

Im building a new one when it arrives tomorrow, and i want to know..


can i create a ghost image, copy onto the new computer and hopefully sort drivers etc out?

also, would it then be possible to upgrade to win 7 x64 or x86 and keep the installed files?

any help on this would be great!

tadcan

yes it is possible, but as you have mentioned their will be issues with drivers, which can be a big issue. Most people don't realise that when they buy a computer/laptop the manufacturer has sorted these issues out. XP will not have stock drivers for newer machines as it is long in the tooth at this stage. Also XP drivers are not always made for new parts and you may have to find that part, find out the chipset and look for another part with that chipset and an XP driver.

There is no direct upgrade path between XP and win7, as win7 esp 64bit was a rewrite of the OS compared to XP. It may be possible to go XP-Vista-win7, but that would probably be a recipe for disaster even if technically possible.

Overheal

i assume its some kind of homebrew or specialty software?

sometimes you can get lucky and the executable will be intelligent enough to detect that it has been moved and go to immediately update itself in the registry, like a hobo filing with the post office whenever he skips town. Works with most game installations nowadays, anyhow. Take Steam for example, you could have 300gb worth of your games, move them to a new hard drive and Steam will make the change the next time you run the launcher.

I suggest creating a restore point and then very simply moving the program's entire folder to some other location (eg. if it's in Program Files, move it to C:\ or something) and then try launching it. If it doesnt work, move it back. If it does work, the next step is to try moving it to a whole other PC and trying the same thing.

bhickey

RoyalMarineComm wrote: »

However, the computer is failing.

A different approach might be to create a virtual machine of the existing computer and use it that way?

AlmightyCushion

bhickey wrote: »

A different approach might be to create a virtual machine of the existing computer and use it that way?

Never would have thought of that one. I'll have to keep that in mind in case I ever have to do something like this.

woolymammoth

bhickey wrote: »

A different approach might be to create a virtual machine of the existing computer and use it that way?

+1
7 has the XP mode, which in my opinion, is feckin brilliant. not only do you have the full XP as a virtual machine, you can even install applications and run them virtually in windows 7 without even having to open up the virtual xp machine.

http://arstechnica.com/../windows-xp-mode

useful tools:
todo backup (interesting feature)
http://technet.microsoft.com/../ee656415

if it's so critical, clone the disk before you do anything else, and check that you can restore the image to another PC! Once that's backed up, virtualise it.

RoyalMarine

Pc arriving today and I think I'll go the virtual route! Thanks guys. I'll report how I get on! Will prob mess up somewhere ;-)

Overheal

bhickey wrote: »

A different approach might be to create a virtual machine of the existing computer and use it that way?

It worked on Jeff Bridges. I don't see why not.

Komplett-Tech: Ryan

This can actually be done quite easilly. But there are a few things you need to know first. You will need to do it with a clean build with nothing but generic drivers, you will have to disable any auto updates that the OS will throw up. Once this is done just ghost the image, stick it on to a RIS or have it set for PXEboot, or burn it to DVD, nlite etc etc. Certain programs will also work, mostly mobile ones for the obvious reasons.

VirtualWorld

I'm pretty much a newbie, but what about xcopy cmd? Is this not the type of problem what xcopy is made for?

RoyalMarine

Hi guys, I said i would give you an update on how this went...

so the new pc arrived, i built it and it ran fine.
so i took that and the accessories to sligo.

Got the old pc, removed the harddrive. (80gb)

connected it to my own pc.

got the new pc, removed 1 of the 500gb drives.

connected it to my own pc.

used norton ghost to create a copy.

it was a success. the ghost was identical as windows would not load both drives as the signature matched each other.

so i removed both drives.

i put the 80gb drive back in the old pc.

i put the 500gb drive back in the new pc.

i booted up the new pc. it found the OS, but would not boot as it detected hardware changes and the drive size was different.

Loaded win xp pro sp3 to my memory stick and put i in.

loaded into repair through terminal.
it then asked for admin password
we didnt have it as the pc came from the company IT crew and they all disbanded with the company before we bought it out.

So i used passcape to hack the password and changed it.

back to repair terminal, and loaded in nicely.

created a new mbr and set the needed paramaters.

rebooted, and it started to boot xp.

it then bluescreen'd.

Success!

then back to xp, through the install method, and got to the repair.

repair went nicely. took 15 minutes.

rebooted, and bam. straight into xp!

loaded all drivers for the new hardware and it was up and running.

however, the "special software" i mentioned in the original post didnt work.

However, after about 6 hours of dicking around with it, i found the problem...

the software uses microsoft SQL...

and the damn repair i did turned off the SQL services...

so into the SQL config setup, enabled the service and loaded up the software we needed.

perfect.

complete dream and its running smoothly.

thanks for all the advice.

I did look into vm, but honestly the operator that uses this pc is so use to it the way it was i decided not to upgrade to win 7 and vm it.

so thanks again, and hopefully this might help someone in the future who needs to do something similiar.

Overheal

That story was emotional.

RoyalMarine

At one stage I almost cried when it booted but the software didn't open :-) then I did a little dance when I found the SQL services disabled :-)

demanufactured

Make sure to take a ghost image of the new pc.

RoyalMarine

lol i did. and i made several backups using different software too.