Sysprep and old ghost image

[zaina]

I'm new to sysprep and sorry for my newbiness. I tried to search but couldn't find the answer.

Before I sold PC1 last week, I did Norton Ghost 8 so I have the ghost image of drive C.

Now I'm using my other PC2 just for temporarily (a month) and I wanted to put the image from PC1 into PC2.

I never play around with sysprep before and I don't know if this is possible or is it too late and I have to install XP and all the softwares from scratch in PC2?

Please help! Thanks.

[IcemanND]

You would have needed to run sysprep on the drive before you got rid of it.

Good news is that if it doesn't boot you should only need to do a repair, you don't normally have to do a full reinstall.

[zaina]

I've tried to install the ghost image on PC2 and it wont go to windows, it keep booting. I tried Safe Mode and full mode.

Can you tell me what to do? How do I repair as you said? Is it by pressing F2 during during xp initialize. It asked me a CD/disc if I'm not mistaken

Edited June 26, 2006 by zaina

[Sonic]

Boot from windows xp CD, at first menu choose Install (not repair!) and setup will detect an already Windows version so you can choose repair in the second menu, that will keep all your program/software/drivers and profile users.

[zaina]

Thank you Sonic and IcemanND. I will try it first and will report back!

[Nepali]

i dun't think it will do, if ur hardware differs,,

it is hardware dependent..

Edited June 26, 2006 by Nepali

[zaina]

Yes both hardware are different.

PC1= P4 2Ghz

PC2= P4 3Ghz

So should I proceed and try?

I haven't done anything much with PC2, just freshly installed XP. It would save me 2-3 days of reinstalling softwares if I can use PC1 old ghost.

Edited June 26, 2006 by zaina

[IcemanND]

The HAL is what matters, you should not have a problem going from the old system to the new most likely the old one was a ACPI Uniprocessor and the new one is an ACPI Muliprocessor. The issue will more likely be the HDD controller.

Lie i said earlier if it's not boot just do the repair as Sonic described. Should be fine it will reinstall the HDD controller drivers for the new motherboard. Then you will need to install the HW drivers for the other hardware not already on the disk.

[Nepali]

why dun't u try and let us know,,

till now i haven't got success in this matter,, i dunno why,, where i have messed up..

[zaina]

Ok, I reinstall ghost image from PC1 and boot from XP CD (nlite-ed SP2).

In the Windows XP Professional Setup screen (blue screen), in the first selection I selected C partition. Press Enter, it gives me 2nd screen:

Format.... NTFS file system (Quick)

Format.... NTFS file system

Leave system file intact (or something like that).

There's no repair option?

Well I accidently press the last selection and it looks like XP started fresh install?

Should I boot from original XP CD (non SP version)?

Edited June 26, 2006 by zaina

[IcemanND]

Can't do it from a cd which has an answer file or anything other than just the SP and integratable hotfixes.

[zaina]

darn! I have to start over. Thanks! and will report back again.

[zaina]

It works!! Thanks very much especially to IcemanND and Sonic!!

When "recover", xp reinstall (almost) everything and the time spent about the same doing unattended installation, but it saves me 2-3 days compared to reinstalling all the softwares again.

When first boot, it only takes 1 monitor in my dual monitor setup but it's not a big deal.

Also, there were some "yellow question marks" in Device Manager. I managed to reinstall all the drivers (forgot to add them in nlite). Thanks again!