Ghosing windows to new machine

[Guest]

Hello:

I am upgrading my existing (old) Dell Optiplex 240 (Windows XP pro) to a
(new) Dell Dimension E520, so I pulled the old hard drive and hooked it to
another machine alonge with the new hard drive. and I copied the old to the
new using ghost.

Then when I put the new drive in the new machine, and started it by booting
from XP CD, the CD did recognize that there is a Windows XP installation, so
I selected to do repaire, when the repaire finish, the system reboots, I get
an error:
Windows not found, Press Ctrl Alt Del to reboot, and when I do the reboot
from the hard drive I get the same error.

My question is, I know is not possible to ghost windows onto another
machine, but is there is a way around it? So I can get exactly my old
programs, settings and files.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

There is no way around it you need to reinstall applications, the reason why
is because the setup program for each of the application copies need files to
the proper places on the hard drive and modifies the system registry.

XP does a utility called Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, it's located in
System Tools folder.

Thanks

 

[Hunter01]

Or you could just sysprep your old machine, ghost it after shutdown,
dump it on the new machine (providing the HAL is compatible, if not try
wacking the HAL to ACPI before sysprepping, that works for most new
hardware), and all will be good other than having to install new drivers
for the new hardware.