Can SysPrep (or anything else) be used to make a Win XP partition from another computer bootable?

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I've used Paragon Backup and Recovery Free as recommended to me in my other question, to backup my C: (Win XP) and D: (installed apps) partitions.

Before taking the rather scary step of breaking the RAID 0 array on which it's currently installed, and restoring to one of the individual drives, I'd quite like to test the restorability of the imaged partitions.

I've restored them on to a spare disk in another computer, which of course won't boot from them in their current state.

Is it possible to use SysPrep (or another tool) on the restored partitions, to make it bootable?

ChrisA

Posted 2010-05-30T09:06:14.617

Reputation: 1 468

If paragon did a full disk image it would have backed up the MBR also, when restoring the image, it should be bootable, not sure what you did. Restoring an image to another PC with different hardware will cause boot problems. – Moab – 2010-08-16T15:22:59.490

Answers

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You can use sysprep to package up the xp install and strip out the hard drive controller specific drivers. This should be done on the origonal computer, but I would disconnect the original disks and use the restored ones. While possible, you'll need to tinker with it in order to get it to work. Here are some links that I found that might help you get started.

http://shsc.info/MovingWindowsToNewHardware

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577

http://www.vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/mass.shtml

I find that using sysprep on a in use workstation doesn't work that well. You always want to start clean if possible. It's much easier to reformat and reinstall then to attempt a sysprep migration.

Doltknuckle

Posted 2010-05-30T09:06:14.617

Reputation: 5 813

Thanks for this. These links eventually convinced me that the effort of all that backing up, transferring and testing, was simply not worth it.

I checked that I had all my data, and just reformatted the RAID drive, and installed Windows 7. That bit took about half an hour, and getting the vast majority of my apps reinstalled was less than a day.

There's a moral there, really - when the time comes for an upgrade, just get on with it !! – ChrisA – 2010-08-21T16:09:15.850

Asked: 2010-05-30T09:06:14.617

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Active: 2019-12-13T15:26:21.777