Norton Ghost

[Steve Cohen]

On one of our HP desktop running Windows XP OEM the hard drive failed. Can
I use Norton Ghost 2003 to make an image from another HP workstation's hard
drive? Any problems with the product Key or activation? This is a lot of
setup if manual install is needed. Lots of OPOS drivers and MS Retail
Management software to reinstall.

Thanks

SC

 

[Walter Marcelis]

It won't work...
I tried to 'clone' my old disk to a new larger disk with ghost.
XP 'hangs' on the blue bootscreen before showing the accounts.
Xp just doesn't accept hardware-changes like other videocard, harddisk
etc...
The only thing you can do then is running a 'repair' install with the xp-cd,
which overwrites all your settings again (not the registry, but all your
servicepacks, driver-upgrades and so on). And in my case the repair even
failed because xp wants some drivers from which i don't have anymore and
refuses to contine with the installation. And after that product a new
activation is needed, which can fail too because it's already used.

 

[Guest]

Steve

Technically it should work, given that the 2 HPs are identical.

Now, should the PC fail to run indows XP, with various error messages, then
you'll need to do a repair install. AT this time, you can use the proper
Product Key for this Computer. After all you are not attempting to install
XP on a 3rd working computer.

Make sure that after finishing with Ghost to Clone the HDD, you power off
the 1st PC and pull out the HDD. Do not boot up to Windows after clonig is
finished. Now move the HDD to 2nd PC. DOn't forget to run IDE detection in
BIOS to configure the BIOS to new HDD.