OK, I've looked through the posts and I think I have a unique situation here:

I have two Dell computers.  (A) runs at 2.4 Ghz the other (B)at 2.0 Ghz.  I want to swap the drives between the two, but after I did this... Windows XP won't boot on either system.  (I need to keep the data on each HD intact)

I haven't created the images of either drive yet, but I thought by restoring an image vs. physically changing the Hard Drives would correct the problem.  I don't know.  The systems are a bit different... (A) has Windows XP Business and a larger HD, and (B) has Windows XP home, and a smaller HD...

I thought Ghost might be a solution to help me, but I think I'm S.O.L. due to something I read about encrypted files...?  Any help or advise would be great.

Thanks,
-Steve

Anytime you try to restore an image to a different system, you run into trouble. Are those the only differences? the OS and hard drive? Any other hardware differences?

Pretty much...  I mean, the office computer has a network card... but if I pulled it out and put it in the other, just to get it to start up ok, then add and remove hardware like you normally do.

I'm thinking that I can't make that leap.

-Steve

The restored image of the same system should work. It's no different than restoring an image to a new hard drive, which people do all the time when their old one dies.

Well, it's not the restoring to a different drive that concerns me... Can I restore to a different system?

Maybe it's more a Windows XP thing.

-Steve

Bahgwan


Quote:

Can I restore to a different system?

So, you're not actually wanting to 'switch hard drives', but you want to transfer an existing OS from one hardware system to another.

The magic word is 'different'!  The more 'different' the two systems are hardware wise, the less likely you will succeed without some...to insurmountable...problems.

As systems have become more and more 'plug-n-play' aware,  power schemes as to how you power down a system, hibernation, etc., the OS is more and more interdependent with the hardware--and especially more true with WinXP, but also back to Win95 and maybe even Win3.x.

Your system motherboards probably have to be identical, with the same Northbridge and Southbridge controller chipsets.  Other components such as amount of RAM and the CPU speed can probably vary some, as well as network cards, as their settings are either automatically adjusted or can be manually changed.

And a different CPU and network card, along with changes in the amount of RAM, and different HDD volume serial number would probably trigger a WinXP re-activation event, depending on when you last activated your WinXP system.

I tried again last night...

I read a web-article on how you can do this.  Put your Windows CD in the drive, turn the system off, switch drives and reboot to the CD, update windows and so on.

I didn't work for me.  The problems are too many so I think my only other alternative if I am to persue this, is to back up data from the different programs neccessary, and restore them on the other system and vise versa.

How extensive and time consuming it may be... I haven't put much more thought into it for now.  Thanks for the info.

-Steve

Not sure what you meant by "update Windows" from the restore CD, but my suggestion would be to try a repair install.  That should completely reinstall Windows while keeping the data and programs intact.  BUt there is a chance that might not work either, besides Microsoft recommends backing up all data prior to a repair install.