Hard disk crashed - where is my 50-digital WinXP installation id?

[Rod Speed]

The problem here is that you can't just take an install that was
designed for one machine and drop into another. Unless those laptops
are 100% identical, it's not going to work. The install of XP was
setup for certain hardware. If that hardware is not the same (100%)
in the second laptop, it's not going to know how to control the hardware; it won't have the proper drivers to let XP
interact with the hardware.

That 100% claim is just plain wrong.

 

[FeMaster]

That 100% claim is just plain wrong.

And your replies are 100% worthless. But thanks for your comments anyway.

 

[FeMaster]

Apparently luck has been on your side.

Most laptops use Intel chipsets, and moving XP between them works.

 

[Erica Eshoo]

If you think everyone smarter than you is a genius, there are *billions*
of geniuses in the world.

I doubt many of them back up programs successfully.

Did you ever look at where programs scatter files?

Take a snapshot of your entire disk and then install, for example,
Microsoft Office.

Then look at the THOUSANDS (not tens, not hundreds, but thousands) of files
and registry settings that are set.

After doing that, tell me that you successfully back up your programs and
reinstall them and they actually work as before.

 

[Erica Eshoo]

The problem here is that you can't just take an install that was designed
for one machine and drop into another. Unless those laptops are 100%
identical, it's not going to work.

This appears to be what happened. The hard disks I had lying around were
from Dell laptops and Toshiba laptops mostly - and I tried to put them in
an IBM laptop.

 

[Erica Eshoo]

And your replies are 100% worthless.

One thing that I learned that might be worthwhile to all of us is the fact
we can save these two files & copy them back after reimaging.
C:\windows\system32\wpa.dbl & c:\windows\system32\wpa.bak

Apparently these files copied back will prevent the Windows Activation from
locking up as they allow Windows Activation to proceed without interaction
or something like that.

Has anyone ever successfully tried this trick?

 

[Larry Sabo]

This appears to be what happened. The hard disks I had lying around were
from Dell laptops and Toshiba laptops mostly - and I tried to put them in
an IBM laptop.

Did you try a repair install after booting from the CD containing the
Windows for the IBM?

Larry

 

[Franklin]

I doubt many of them back up programs successfully.

Did you ever look at where programs scatter files?

Take a snapshot of your entire disk and then install, for example,
Microsoft Office.

Then look at the THOUSANDS (not tens, not hundreds, but thousands)
of files and registry settings that are set.

After doing that, tell me that you successfully back up your
programs and reinstall them and they actually work as before.

Thousands of files set for one large application means te hard drive
can't be backed up?

Next you'll mention that a cpu can't possibly be running at 2GHz
because it's 20 times faster than the 100MHz tuning on your FM radio
and everyone knows that nothiung travels faster than radio waves.

Are you trolling?

Or did you sleep through your physics lessons?

 

[Rod Speed]

-Lost wrote...

Acronis True Image

- for restore: Acronis True Image
- for transferring hard disk to another computer
- identical PC'es
(same motherborad, same disk controller, same video driver, same eveything)

Doesnt need to be same everything. And a repair install will fix even radical differences in the hardware.

- alternatively, Sysprep the source OS first ;-)
tranafer the hdd, and cross your fingers before reboot

And do a repair install if it doesnt work.

 

[Rod Speed]

Raymond J. Johnson Jr. wrote

I doubt many of them back up programs successfully.

Your doubts are completely irrelevant, hordes do that successfully anyway.

Did you ever look at where programs scatter files?

Irrelevant. And image of a hard drive IMAGES the hard drive so
that replacing the hard drive works fine. Thats why its called an image.

And file by file backup works fine too.

Take a snapshot of your entire disk and then install, for example, Microsoft Office.

Then look at the THOUSANDS (not tens, not hundreds,
but thousands) of files and registry settings that are set.

And an IMAGE of the hard drive backs up them all.

So does a complete file by file backup too.

After doing that, tell me that you successfully back up your
programs and reinstall them and they actually work as before.

As easy as falling off a log with working imager. Thats why they are called imagers.

 

[Rod Speed]

And your replies are 100% worthless. But thanks for your comments anyway.

Never ever could bullshit its way out of a wet paper bag.

There's plenty of hardware differences that wont prevent a move of
an XP boot drive between systems and which will handle the hardware
differences fine on the first boot of the drive in the new system.