patzo said:
Is there a way to migrate/clone a Windows XP Pro onto a new (laptop) machine?
It would be difficult, especially because of the proprietary hardware
found in most laptops.
The basic procedure would be to:
1. Connect the old and new computers with a data transfer cable,
preferably a network crossover cable but a laplink type parallel port
cable might also do. A laplink serial cable would be too slow and I
am not certain about using a USB port connection in this type of
situation.
2. Use a disk copying/cloning program such as Norton Ghost or Image
from
www.bootitng.com to transfer the entire drive contents to the new
laptop.
3. Boot the new laptop using your Windows XP CDROM and do a Repair
Install as per the instructions at
http://michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html
Some possible pitfalls and other considerations:
1. If your existing Windows XP is an OEM version (e.g. it came bundled
with a new computer) then the license for that version is permanently
locked to the first computer that it was installed on and it cannot be
legitimately transferred to another computer under any circumstances.
2. If your Windows XP CD is a "system recovery" disk, which is what
most laptops come with these days, then it will almost certainly be
impossible to do a Repair Install of the data copied to the new
laptop, whicn means that it will not be properly configured for the
hardware in that machine and will almost certainly fail to boot
properly.
3. The new laptop almost certainly will come with an OEM version of
Windows installed. If you transfer your Windows XP license from the
other machine to this one then the new OEM license becomes unusable,
as it is permanently locked to the new laptop and cannot be
legitimately transferred.
4. Installing an operating system version other than the specific one
that came bundled with the new laptop will quite possibly void the
warranty on the new laptop.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
