Dissimilar restore - Inaccessible boot device

[Gromit2005]

I had to restore an image of a failed old HP machine into a new HP G4. The system wouldn't boot, but I was able to fix it by perfroming in-place upgrade and supplying the driver with F6.

I plan a migration of my old systems into mostly G4, and I need a fatser and easier procedure to add mass-storage drivers to an offline system (from WinPE). Is there such an utility, or may be someone can give me pointers on which C++ functions to use to write one?

I also thought about adding drivers to a live old system before backing up and restoring, but it's impossible to install the drivers without hardware being installed. Is there anyway way to bypass this limitation and add drivers to a live system that doesn't have the hardware installed?

This is a huge problem for all System Administartors, and it would be great finally to have a solution for it.

thanks,

Gromit2005

Edited November 5, 2005 by Gromit2005

[skeith]

Before making the image remove all HDD hardware specific drivers. Revert to generic HDD drivers. After image is restored install new hardware specific HDD drivers.

If image already made boot to safe mode and remove all HDD controller drivers and reboot.

Edited November 24, 2005 by skeith