Beemer Biker said:
Be sure to copy the two files in system32 to a floppy:
wpa.dbl and wpa.bak
After rebooting (into safe mode) copy them back into system32.
The usually, but not always, avoids re-registering.
The free software listed by Carey will work fine but you might
consider investing in Acronis True Image. While it will not
immediately make a copy to another disk, you can create a
backup on the primary drive, then swap drives (new drive as
primary master, old boot drive on secondary controller) then
boot the True Image recovery disk and tell it to build the new
boot drive from the old drive's backup. While is two steps,
the Acronis True Image can be used as a really good backup
tool, especially if you got a DVD burner. If you don't have
enough space on the original boot drive then you can backup
across the network to another system that has enough space.
I have never used Norton Ghost, maybe it does the same
thing???
I use Drive Image 7 which became Norton Ghost 9.0 when
Symantec bought out PowerQuest last year. Drive Image,
Ghost, True Image, and many other cloning utilities allow
one to copy a partition (i.e. a "Local Disk") from one HD to
another HD byte-for-byte so that programs installed on an
OS remain installed. In Drive Image, this is called a "Drive
Copy" operation. If the copy is to be bootable, you tell the
utility to make the new partition a "primary" one, and if it will
be the partition that has the boot manager and loader to be
used on the new HD, to mark the partition "active". If the HD
doesn't have a Master Boot Record (needed if any partition
on the HD is to be booted), you tell the utility to copy over
the "MBR" as well from the source HD. What you get is a
HD with a copy of the original OS and its files that don't
even know they reside on a different HD.
In doing this, you should be careful not to boot up the new
OS for the 1st time with the old copy of the OS visible to it.
Otherwise, the "child" OS will set pointers within itself that
point to files in its "parent" OS and the "child" will thereafter
be dependent on the continued presence of its "parent".
The easiest way to accomplish the transition is to jumper
the new HD as Slave and the old HD as Master (assuming
they are on the same IDE cable) to keep the old HD at the
head of the BIOS's boot sequence. After the copy, remove
the old HD, putting the new HD in the old HD's position.
(Jumpers don't matter unless you're using Cable Select
and/or you intend to use a 2nd HD on the same cable.)
The new HD will automatically go to the head of the boot
sequence, so it will be selected for booting when the PC starts
up. Once the new HD's OS has been started for the 1st time,
you can shut it down and put in the 2nd HD for use as extra
storage. If you do so, you'll want the BIOS to use the new HD
as the boot drive, so jumper it as Master and the old HD as
Slave so that the BIOS will by default set its boot sequence
with the new HD ahead of the old HD. You might also have
to check in the BIOS to see that this is indeed the case, and
you may have to adjust the boot sequence yourself if it is not
set correctly.
So the answer to the question of "can I transfer the old HD's
OS and files to a new HD without re-installing anything" is
"Yes". This can be done with various free utilities, but the
utilities that include various file archiving capabilities and
making compressed OS images (non-bootable files containing
an OS image) - such as Ghost, or True Image, or several others -
cost some money.
*TimDan*
