[Question] Is this possible: raw xp pro with universal ghost-ability?

[Mordac85]

By Ghosting only the partition, the MBR will not be transferred and the target partition will not boot. Also, this method could only work if the HAL on both systems are compatible.

[pmshah]

Let me assure you that ghosting definitely works. In fact it even works in difficult situations. As long as the hdd space on the recipient partition is larger than that occupied by the os on the partition that is being hosted.

What you need to do is create a primary partition on the recipient disk large enough to receive the data from the ghost image. Set it as active & the system will also boot normally.

As an example I have successfully made compressed ghost image of a 4 gb system drive on which the occupied space was only about 1.5 GB. I restored this image on a 8 gb primary & active partition. It made no changes to the MBR, did not change the size of the partiton nor screw up the fat. I have also restore this ghost image to a 3 gb partition successfully.

I used to use this method on earlier OSes like 98 & ME. In those cases I would boot into safe mode. Go to device manager & delete all components. Shutdown the PC & create Ghost image. Once this image was restored & the system was booted the os would go through the process of detecting all the hardware & install appropriate driver. On 98 it was a bit of a pain since all the hardware drivers were not natively available but ME never posed a problem.

In case of XP this procedure was not possible since you could not simply delete/uninstall devices in the device manager. Switching to the generic mode for IDE & Video adapter before creating the ghost image did the trick. But there is one caveat with this procedure. You MUST boot into safe mode at the first boot otherwise you will run into problems. Even under safe mode the OS will detect the hardware & insatall necessary driuvers. You can then reboot normally.

I have also used this method to transfer hard disks from intel mobos to athlon mobos.

[LoveLiteXP]

I also found a simple method of doing it after studying several fora for transferring HDD from one PC to another evenwith different hardware.

Install xp normally. Change the ide driver to generic version. Change the graphic driver to standard xvga. Shutdown. Do not reboot. Make a ghost image of this partition. Dump this image onto a new partition. Boot into SAFE MODE only. Unles you have exotic hardware windows will detect & laod correct drivers for both. Yoy can then reboot normally. It should work OK. It does for me.

I dont think that is the best way though! In my case, windows does a full installation from the hard drive and will install several updates and programes in +/-20 minutes. No problems with the HAL. If you leave the computername, domain / workgroup option out of the WINNT.SIF file you can join a computer to the domain with a personal computername. Thats the only time you have to hit enter the rest is automatic.

[Mordac85]

What you need to do is create a primary partition on the recipient disk large enough to receive the data from the ghost image. Set it as active & the system will also boot normally.

That's why the Ghosting of a partition works for you. I was just stating for anyone else that may be reading this thread that if you Ghost a partition to a partition the MBR is not copied and while the data may be there, it will not be bootable until you do something extra to make it so.

For imaging a system this process, while complicated, gets the job done. However as a generic method to install XP I'd stick w/LoveLiteXP's method of a cusotmized unattended install. Considering chee's original question I think we've covered it. He can either A. use an image and live w/in the HAL constraints, or B. create a customized unattended install.

[pmshah]

What you need to do is create a primary partition on the recipient disk large enough to receive the data from the ghost image. Set it as active & the system will also boot normally.

That's why the Ghosting of a partition works for you. I was just stating for anyone else that may be reading this thread that if you Ghost a partition to a partition the MBR is not copied and while the data may be there, it will not be bootable until you do something extra to make it so.

For imaging a system this process, while complicated, gets the job done. However as a generic method to install XP I'd stick w/LoveLiteXP's method of a cusotmized unattended install. Considering chee's original question I think we've covered it. He can either A. use an image and live w/in the HAL constraints, or B. create a customized unattended install.

What one can do is set the bbot order to 1 : hhd0, 2: cdrom. & the following procedure for a fully unattended ghost restore.

If you are using dos version of ghost you can create batch file which will do necessary partitionoing & setting active partition. GDISK can confortably do this.

In the first round the process will shift to cd rom. Gdisk will setup your hard disk by ading command line switches & reboot.

In the second round it will again shift to cd & restore your ghost image reboot.

4DOS, which is an extremely powerful command shell & now freeware, is eminently suited for on screen displays & creation of this batch file.

In third round it will boot from the hdd & will complete installation. You can modify the boot.ini of your original partition from which you created ghosted image to show safe mode as one of the options & wait for you to select it.

If image size is not a limiting factor one can also select the option of transferring the installation files to hdd for preparing the initial partition from which ghost image is to be created. Without allowing it to reboot create image of this partially installed xp partition & use it. Rest of the steps remain unchanged.

[MrCobra]

WinXP Embedded can do this. It can even be used as a LiveCD.

[nomadh]

I use ghost between systems of major hardware differences also. Xp installed originally on an amd 64 gets ghosted to an intel 845 then an intel 865 MB then ghosted to file again. From that ver I can roll it back out to a intel 945 and then a 965. Saved again then that one rolled out to to an old intel 815 all without much trouble. That was switching from single core to dual core hal and back again without a prob typically. The only irritant is entering the rediculous xp activation code. (I have activation codes for each pc but if M$ is so in love with the crap they can come here and enter them all for me). Microsft activation discriminates againt the dyslexic

The only hardware problem I have is when I try and put this ghost image that started on the amd instal (W/ F6 sata driver instal) goes back to a similar PC. It looses its f6 drivers and wont boot.

Any good answers for this tweak? Currently I do an xp repair install and do F6 again.

Thanks for the good info