Issue with Ghost Cloning windows drive

[mrc73]

I have a question about using Norton Ghost to clone a hard drive. I have a Dell laptop for my business with Windows XP SP2 installed. I was wanting to make a clone of the hard drive and put that image on a drive in my desktop since it is much faster and use that as my work computer.

The cloning goes perfect but when I attempt to start Windows I always get a blue screen of death error indicating something wrong with the hardware. Is the original Windows image tied to the laptop and that is why I can not copy it over? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[marulee]

Obviously when you clone the image including the OS, OS recognizes and will perform the operation (after cloned the image onto other PC which is NOT identical) based on the hardwares information mirrored from the previous!

 

[mrc73]

OK, so is there a way to copy everything over without having to completely install Windows from scratch? I want to keep all my settings and software installed instead of having to re-create everything.

 

[marulee]

When you get BSOD, can you press F8 to login to the safe mode?

 

[tommytran]

Originally posted by: mrc73
OK, so is there a way to copy everything over without having to completely install Windows from scratch? I want to keep all my settings and software installed instead of having to re-create everything.

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATICW/universal-restore.html

 

[LiLithTecH]

Originally posted by: tommytran

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATICW/universal-restore.html

Just curious as to how Acronis Universal Restore is going to help in this stituation?

Norton Ghost is being used.

Universal Restore requires a copy of Acronis Workstation and Universal Restore to function.

----------------------------------
mrc73

There is no easy way around your problem.

The differences hardware between the 2 PCs is the problem as a previous post
pointed out.

You would need to DELETE all the special hardware devices from the laptop before cloning.
(IDE Controllers, Network card(s), Infared, Audio, Video devices)

Then you need to have all the related drivers for your desktop. Keeping your fingers
crossed, hopefully none of your applications is bound to any of the hardware, and
have not broken because of that fact.

A clean install of the OS and applications is always the better way to go if possible.

 

[tommytran]

Originally posted by: LiLithTecH

Originally posted by: tommytran

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATICW/universal-restore.html

Just curious as to how Acronis Universal Restore is going to help in this stituation?

Norton Ghost is being used.

Universal Restore requires a copy of Acronis Workstation and Universal Restore to function.

----------------------------------
mrc73

There is no easy way around your problem.

The differences hardware between the 2 PCs is the problem as a previous post
pointed out.

You would need to DELETE all the special hardware devices from the laptop before cloning.
(IDE Controllers, Network card(s), Infared, Audio, Video devices)

Then you need to have all the related drivers for your desktop. Keeping your fingers
crossed, hopefully none of your applications is bound to any of the hardware, and
have not broken because of that fact.

A clean install of the OS and applications is always the better way to go if possible.

As already stated, clean install is not an option.
Couldn't use NG, regardless of remove all the special drive (b/c desktop and laptop using different MB). Haven't you tried?
There are several options but Acronis so far is a cheap way to go about

 

[mrc73]

Sorry for the delayed response guys, and thanks for the suggestions.

No, I can not boot into safe mode. I see the windows logo and the computer crashes. I really don't want to do a clean install since that will wipe everything out, although i did try a repair and that did not work. I didn't try to remove the hardware stuff from the device manager but that's worth a try.

Also, thanks for the suggestion of Acronis. I've never heard of that software before but I may give it a try if the other options don't work. $30 isn't bad and would be worth it if everything could be preserved.

 

[jackschmittusa]

It is a driver problem between the notebook hadrware drivers and the desktop hardware.

It might be possible to delete all of the drivers from the notebook drive, use Ghost from DOS, then do a repair install of Windows on the desktop.

I have managed to make this work when changing mbs in a desktop machine.