Moving Win 2K to another PC

[Guest]

(I hope I'm in the right forum.)

Can I move a hard drive with Win 2K Server on it from a slow and limited PC
to a better one and expect it to boot properly? I know this doesn't work
with XP.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

(I hope I'm in the right forum.)

Can I move a hard drive with Win 2K Server on it from a slow and limited PC
to a better one and expect it to boot properly? I know this doesn't work
with XP.

The situation is much the same in Win2000. These links might help:

How to Move a Windows Installation to Different Hardware
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q249694
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314082

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q292175.ASP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;824125

 

[Guest]

the Thanks for your fast response. I really appreciate it.

I've read the first MS document. It seems to require the use of Windows
2000 Backup facility. To do this I would have to boot into the Administrator
account. Unfortunately the installation on this recently-donated Dell
Dimension has the Administrator password set and I don't know what it is.
Nobody else does either. That's why I wanted to move the drive itself. I
surmise that this won't work. (Should I try it anyway?)

That leaves trying to set a new password. I have downloaded Boot Disk,
Astrumi and Emergency Boot. (I thought Astrumi was for Windows and tried to
use it in the past. Now it looks like it's for Linux) I don't have much
hope for this. Do you know of any other programs like these?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I think that backing up a machine prior to cracking its admin
password is a wise move. Here are a few options:
- Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD (www.bootdisk.com),
then use xcopy.exe with the appropriate switches to copy the
whole system drive to a slave or to an external USB disk.
- Temporarily install the disk as a slave disk in some other
Win2000/XP PC, then proceed as above.
- Boot the machine with a bootable recovery CD from an
imaging tool such as Acronis or Ghost, then create an image.

Many people use this boot disk to reset the administrator's
password: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html.