Is it posible to clone xp? calling all xp gurus...

[abispac]

Hope i can make myself clear since my english its not too good,  anyway , im in a situation where i have a computer with xp, and i have 2 pieces of software that weight 260gb one 180 and 80 the other one. What i want to do its to save me some time and use norton gosth 2003 to clone the setup i have in the first computer, wich is not a problem if i do with a similar hardware computer, the problem is that when i try to clone the computer to another diferent computer, i get the infamous blue screen of death. Of course i can instal xp, on the 2 pieces of software, but if you compare that cloning only takes 3 hours on a p4 computer vs installing all from scratch that takes about 20 hours i was hoping that someone can help me out with  a  solution to clone the pc and fix the blue screen of death, since i have to do this for 4 more computers. I got legal copies of xp and have legal licens for the 2 pieces of software, so im not trying to do something illegal, just wanna save some time.
Thanks for any help.

[SGT]

The BSOD comes when your two installations have different hard drive controller chipsets on the motherboards.  The error usually refers to "Inaccessible Boot Device", or something like that.  To avoid this error, you have to boot up on the first computer and change your hard drive controller in the device manager to the generic one.  Then clone the installation to the other hard drive.

...you're still going to have to overcome Windows Activation problems once XP boots up and sees that it's on different hardware unless you're using one of the bootleg non-activation required versions of XP.  Also some of your devices with require drivers depending upon how different computer A is from computer B.

A fresh install is the way to go, if you ask me.  An install usually takes less than 4 hours including downloading device drivers, service packs, and critical updates.

[smalltownguy]

With software pigs like that, you're better off with a fresh install. Yes, it's going to take a while. I assist in IT with my company, and EVERYTHING takes longer than I want it to. I just spent the past 2 days upgrading 6 workstations from XP Home to XP Pro. Normally not a big deal, except that I didn't have any upgrade discs left, and had to use OEM disks to complete the upgrade. 2 machines upgraded, the other 4 flaked out and had to be wiped and we started over. One of them was the owner's machine. Sucks. Thankfully we backed up data, but the process took MUCH longer that way.

Back up the whole hard drive to remote media. Then copy files & settings to another drive and  slowly, methodically, make a list of all of the software and settings. Reinstall everything from scratch. Your registry will thank you.

[abispac]

The BSOD comes when your two installations have different hard drive controller chipsets on the motherboards.  The error usually refers to "Inaccessible Boot Device", or something like that.  To avoid this error, you have to boot up on the first computer and change your hard drive controller in the device manager to the generic one.  Then clone the installation to the other hard drive.

...you're still going to have to overcome Windows Activation problems once XP boots up and sees that it's on different hardware unless you're using one of the bootleg non-activation required versions of XP.  Also some of your devices with require drivers depending upon how different computer A is from computer B.

A fresh install is the way to go, if you ask me.  An install usually takes less than 4 hours including downloading device drivers, service packs, and critical updates.

Thanks for the tip, for my situation i think its better to spend 4 hours cloning the hard drive and maybe 1 hour installing drivers, than spending 20 hours installing software. Thanks again for your help.

[dstone]

When I would do this at my previous job, I would clone the system then just start a Windows Repair (boot from XP disc, go through the motions to install it, although it should detect a previous install and ask to repair).

[abispac]

The BSOD comes when your two installations have different hard drive controller chipsets on the motherboards.  The error usually refers to "Inaccessible Boot Device", or something like that.  To avoid this error, you have to boot up on the first computer and change your hard drive controller in the device manager to the generic one.  Then clone the installation to the other hard drive.

...you're still going to have to overcome Windows Activation problems once XP boots up and sees that it's on different hardware unless you're using one of the bootleg non-activation required versions of XP.  Also some of your devices with require drivers depending upon how different computer A is from computer B.

A fresh install is the way to go, if you ask me.  An install usually takes less than 4 hours including downloading device drivers, service packs, and critical updates.

Thanks for the tip, for my situation i think its better to spend 4 hours cloning the hard drive and maybe 1 hour installing drivers, than spending 20 hours installing software. Thanks again for your help.

Sorry, i coulndt find how to set the hd controller to generic, can you help telling me how, i coulnd find any on google... thanks

[abispac]

When I would do this at my previous job, I would clone the system then just start a Windows Repair (boot from XP disc, go through the motions to install it, although it should detect a previous install and ask to repair).

i found this article http://michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html#1 seems that it is posible.... my quetion for you is, what exactly do you repair, i ask since there are alot of options, thanks for any help.

[DillonFoulds]

In my experience, your safest bet would be to try a Sysprep, then ghost yourself a master image.

Sysprep will make your xp install like you just installed xp off a cd, but leave all the files intact. I would suggest the following:
Install windows (10gb partitino max is fine, i've used 6gb partition for xp with no sweat)  and set it up as you'd like, with an arcade user login.
Put your roms, emulators, front-end, etc. on a seperate partition.
Overwrite the default user folder in documents and settings with your custom arcade user folder.
Sysprep with mini-setup and reseal.
Before your computer boots in to windows, ghost the windows partition.

Now on new installs, you just dump your partition image to the new hard drive, run the windows mini-setup, and create a user profile.

The old arcade user profile will be replacing the default user profile, so things should look exactly like the old profile. It'll take only 15 minutes to do a full setup/restore. All that's left is to copy your rom/emu/fe drive and you're set.

The attraction to sysprep is that it will let windows setup install all the drivers, and you can specify a folder during the sysprep.ini to grab new drivers from, if you feel so inclined.

[dstone]

When I would do this at my previous job, I would clone the system then just start a Windows Repair (boot from XP disc, go through the motions to install it, although it should detect a previous install and ask to repair).

i found this article http://michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html#1 seems that it is posible.... my quetion for you is, what exactly do you repair, i ask since there are alot of options, thanks for any help.

Here's a repair guide from the same site:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm#RI

You want to do the "repair install."

[abispac]

When I would do this at my previous job, I would clone the system then just start a Windows Repair (boot from XP disc, go through the motions to install it, although it should detect a previous install and ask to repair).

i found this article http://michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html#1 seems that it is posible.... my quetion for you is, what exactly do you repair, i ask since there are alot of options, thanks for any help.

Here's a repair guide from the same site:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm#RI

You want to do the "repair install."

Thanks mate, this should be really easy.... 

[abispac]

With software pigs like that, you're better off with a fresh install. Yes, it's going to take a while. I assist in IT with my company, and EVERYTHING takes longer than I want it to. I just spent the past 2 days upgrading 6 workstations from XP Home to XP Pro. Normally not a big deal, except that I didn't have any upgrade discs left, and had to use OEM disks to complete the upgrade. 2 machines upgraded, the other 4 flaked out and had to be wiped and we started over. One of them was the owner's machine. Sucks. Thankfully we backed up data, but the process took MUCH longer that way.

Back up the whole hard drive to remote media. Then copy files & settings to another drive and  slowly, methodically, make a list of all of the software and settings. Reinstall everything from scratch. Your registry will thank you.

dont want to sound rude, but this looks kind of alot of work, plus im not using this for arcade or emulation realted, thanks for the tip tho... 

[Havok]

Try using Acronis Snap Deploy with the universal deploy add on  - much better than Ghost, and it has a wizard to migrate to different hardware. I was a hardcore Ghost user, but after using Acronis, I don't even use Ghost anymore...

[abispac]

Try using Acronis Snap Deploy with the universal deploy add on  - much better than Ghost, and it has a wizard to migrate to different hardware. I was a hardcore Ghost user, but after using Acronis, I don't even use Ghost anymore...

i will give a try, thanks

[Havok]

In my experience, your safest bet would be to try a Sysprep, then ghost yourself a master image.

That's a good free option, but will not work all of the time. If the HAL is different, then Sysprep still won't help avoiding the BSOD on boot.