Repair Install

[Jim Gainsley]

I've read Michael Stevens excellent paper on Repair Installs but have run
into a problem that's not described.

We are transferring XP Pro from an older machine with a PCI bus (Intel 845
chipset) to a new machine with a PCI-E bus (Intel 975 chipset).

We used Paragon's Drive Copy to clone the old drive to a new drive. We put
the new drive in the new machine.

We ran Setup per the instructions in the Repair Install paper, using a
slipstreamed SP2 CD. We got a message that Setup was doing some disk
maintenance after which we got the message that we had to restart and run
Setup again. We did that, again choosing to boot from the CDROM and
choosing Enter and R and everything then proceeded normally through the
"first round".

The machine then restarted normally booting from the hd.

Setup reappeared as it should telling me there was 39 minutes to go.

It got just a little over half-way through the Install Devices process when
it rebooted. We again let it boot from the hd and we got a message,
something like Installation is Not complete, run Setup again.

We did that from the CDROM choosing Enter and R as we did the first time.

Again all went well until we got a little over half way through the Install
Devices, whence it rebooted and we got the message Setup is Restarting. The
same cycle continued several times. At an appropriate time, we changed to
another slipstreamed CDROM and also turned the computer off, removing all
power. None of these things helped.

What do we do?

Jim

 

[Malke]

I've read Michael Stevens excellent paper on Repair Installs but have run
into a problem that's not described.

We are transferring XP Pro from an older machine with a PCI bus (Intel 845
chipset) to a new machine with a PCI-E bus (Intel 975 chipset).

We used Paragon's Drive Copy to clone the old drive to a new drive. We
put the new drive in the new machine.

We ran Setup per the instructions in the Repair Install paper, using a
slipstreamed SP2 CD. We got a message that Setup was doing some disk
maintenance after which we got the message that we had to restart and run
Setup again. We did that, again choosing to boot from the CDROM and
choosing Enter and R and everything then proceeded normally through the
"first round".

The machine then restarted normally booting from the hd.

Setup reappeared as it should telling me there was 39 minutes to go.

It got just a little over half-way through the Install Devices process
when
it rebooted. We again let it boot from the hd and we got a message,
something like Installation is Not complete, run Setup again.

We did that from the CDROM choosing Enter and R as we did the first time.

Again all went well until we got a little over half way through the
Install
Devices, whence it rebooted and we got the message Setup is Restarting.
The
same cycle continued several times. At an appropriate time, we changed to
another slipstreamed CDROM and also turned the computer off, removing all
power. None of these things helped.

What do we do?

Apparently the hardware is too different for a Repair Install. Do a Clean
Install, then install drivers for the new hardware, programs from
installation media, restore data from backups.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install How-To
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#reinstall_Windows - What you
will need on-hand

Malke

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

While a repair install can get XP settled on hardware other than that on
which it was first installed, I doubt if Microsoft had in mind to facilitate
users transferring an installation between wildly differing hardware bases..

There is also the 'third party factor' here.. the program used to initially
clone the installation may not have done a particularly good job.. some
don't, especially if there is more than just the OS being cloned..

In this way, the 'repair install' facility not only has to try to make sense
of the driver issues, but also has to try to preserve settings that may or
may not have been be royally screwed during the cloning process..

 

[Jim Gainsley]

Well I sort of see your point. With Windows 95-98 MS told us that the
program could stand changes in processors and chipsets but could not stand
changes in bus technology and trying to do that caused an unstable system
that might run until one new thing was added and then become wildly erratic.

Are you saying then that Microsoft says that bus technology changes are
still not doable with WinXP? (I not familiar with the technology
differences between PCI and PCI-E, but I was hoping they wouldn't be great
enough to cause a problem.)

We need to know because we will be converting a number of machines from
win98SE PCI to PCI-E and if there's anyway to avoid new installs we like to
find it--it would save us a huge amount of work.

Thanks for your help.

Jim

 

[Jim Gainsley]

Thanks for your comments, please see my reply to Mike Hall.

Jim

 

[Jim Gainsley]

One more thought. The Recovery Console is apparently still available. Might
that work? I've never used it.

Jim

 

[Jim Gainsley]

If I do a clean install and apply our Tape backup, would the F.A.S.T program
work for us? I have read but not studied Gary Woodruff's paper.

 

[gls858]

Well I sort of see your point. With Windows 95-98 MS told us that the
program could stand changes in processors and chipsets but could not stand
changes in bus technology and trying to do that caused an unstable system
that might run until one new thing was added and then become wildly erratic.

Are you saying then that Microsoft says that bus technology changes are
still not doable with WinXP? (I not familiar with the technology
differences between PCI and PCI-E, but I was hoping they wouldn't be great
enough to cause a problem.)

We need to know because we will be converting a number of machines from
win98SE PCI to PCI-E and if there's anyway to avoid new installs we like to
find it--it would save us a huge amount of work.

Thanks for your help.

Jim

It might save you a lot of time in the front end but cost you many hours
and lots of headaches in the long run. I would suggest loading XP and then
installing the needed software and restoring necessary files.
gls858