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?

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.

Bahgwan

Quote:


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.

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.