Restoring PC Image to New PC?

Tom Bombadildo

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Howdy all, having some issues with a couple PCs that I need help with.

I have 4 PCs, 2 of them are going bad and need all their contents (programs, documents, everything) transferred to 2 new PCs. One of the PCs has Windows 7, the other Windows XP. The new PCs have no OS on them, have cleared HDDs, and different specs and such.

My first thought was to make a system image on the Windows 7 PC, and restore it on one of the news ones using a repair disc. So I tried that, and everything seemed to go fine until it reboot. The new PC got stuck in a bootloop, it would get to the "Starting Windows..." screen and then freeze and restart. So then I tried using Clonezilla to make an image and restore it to the new HDD, same problem. Any thoughts on this one?

I have yet to touch the Windows XP PC, as I'm not sure what to do to this one. Is there any advice on what to do here? Ideally I'd like a complete system image, however seeing how the Windows 7 PC had issues that doesn't seem like the best option. Is there any other way to transfer everything?
 

Plainscript

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Tools like Clonezilla are, afaik, more if you want to maintain and restore images for the SAME system. Not for different systems - mostly due to driver-issues.

Personally, I would back-up everything you want/need manually. :)
 

Tom Bombadildo

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I've considered that, however these are PCs from my dads office and have more than their fair share of programs and documents that would need to be backed up. It's sort of a last resort thing, if I can't find any easier way.

My next thought was creating VHD's of the old PCs and setting the new PCs up to use those to access everything, if that's plausible?
 

PsyBlade

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You have transfered everything, that's the problem.
Windows installs don't like being run on a different mainboard.

I suggest you do a fresh install of windows and the programs and only copy the documents.

Only if that's absolutely impossible there are some rather desperate other things to try (each on its own copy):
-the windows repair function (on the install disk)
-booting in save mode and remove every single driver in the device manager (or on the old pc, but make a backup before)
-installing windows over the old install again (XP and below only)
 

Plainscript

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I've considered that, however these are PCs from my dads office and have more than their fair share of programs and documents that would need to be backed up. It's sort of a last resort thing, if I can't find any easier way.

My next thought was creating VHD's of the old PCs and setting the new PCs up to use those to access everything, if that's plausible?

Definitely worth the try. Big chance it will work properly. :)
 

lukinoz

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You have to do sysprep and then make image (for example prom rescue cd).
Sysprep makes that image working on pcs with different hardware.

EDIT: Works with W7/8 and probably vista too.
 

Tom Bombadildo

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You have to do sysprep and then make image (for example prom rescue cd).
Sysprep makes that image working on pcs with different hardware.

EDIT: Works with W7/8 and probably vista too.
Oh fucking derp >.< I knew I was forgetting something. Ok, yeah I'll do this then and report back. Thanks
 

Rydian

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I once moved my WIndows 7 HDD to another PC and it worked just fine. Windows booted up without any driver info (fallback drivers for most things), and of course become unlicensed again, but I was pleasantly surprised how easily 7 went from one machine to another.

Can't say the same for XP though. The way it handles the hardware is more hardcoded and annoying to deal with. When I was moving an XP drive from a VPC to a physical PC (as part of a workaround on installing a clean OS on a machine with no functional optical drive or networking) I had to install XP in the VPC, then do a repair install ontop of itself to the point that it wanted to restart (at that point it had wiped the hardware info), then I hard-cut it, copied the partition to the physical drive, installed it in the target PC, and when it started up it resumed the XP 'install' process from the point of gathering and recording the hardware config.
 

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