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    Ghosting a drive

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by kinkouin, Jul 12, 2007.

  1. kinkouin

    kinkouin Notebook Geek

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    I was thinking, instead of doing a clean install of Vista or XP Prof, why not just ghost my desktop over to my laptop?

    Wouldnt that work easier?

    My desktop is Windows XP already, and might as well just move all the nice shiny programs and configs with it.

    Cause here are my current options:

    1. Clean install of Vista Ultimate (instead of a upgrade from XP Home to Vista, which I did originally)

    2. Clean install of XP Professional

    3. Ghosting my Desktop over to my Laptop, then working out the kinks there in drivers.
     
    kinkouin, Jul 12, 2007
    #1
  2. panteedropper

    panteedropper Notebook Deity

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    totally different hardware, i wouldn't recommend it. Different chipset as well, its possible windows might not even boot.
     
    panteedropper, Jul 12, 2007
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  3. Playmaker

    Playmaker Notebook Deity

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    Don't do it because this step

    will be insurmountably painful.
     
    Playmaker, Jul 12, 2007
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  4. colm

    colm Notebook Consultant

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    It won't even boot- you'll get a 0x7b blue screen because the disk controller is different on your laptop than your desktop...
     
    colm, Jul 12, 2007
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  5. paradoxer

    paradoxer Notebook Geek

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    You can install the Intel Matrix driver on your desktop before you ghost the OS into the small 2.5" laptop HDD.

    I have never done that myself (neither anyone I know) but this should work, in theory anyway..! ;-) But I have transferred a lot of OS:es from a weaker server to a powerful one with totally different RAID cards, other chipsets, graphics card etc etc. It is the same procedure in all of the cases, but it needs a lot of work.

    Before you ghost, you will need to the following on your desktop:

    1. Install the Intel Matrix drivers. You will not be able to install it just by klicking the .exe binary; you have to copy the driver files and configs manually and hack some values in the registry.

    2. Uninstall graphics drivers, network drivers, chipset drivers and sound drivers. Rest of the drivers you can skip. Some old devices will be hidden devices on the laptop, but they will not bother you.

    Other alternative is if you just ghost the drive and try to repair the OS through the XP-installation procedure, because you will probably not be able to boot up the laptop. This will give you more problems, since you need to get rid of a lot of drivers and clean up.

    Ghosting the desktop can be worth if you have a lot of programs and settings that you must keep. You will have a lot of job to do, but if you think that this will be easier than reinstalling everything, then give it a try.
     
    paradoxer, Jul 12, 2007
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  6. kinkouin

    kinkouin Notebook Geek

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    Bah, in the end I gave up on that, and just installed a different version of Vista, a 64-bit one, instead of the original x86 version that I had used the digital upgrade. So far, everything seems fine, and is actually running much faster than before.

    It's a clean install, so much of my programs are gone, however, redoing things seem much easier in the long run.
     
    kinkouin, Jul 12, 2007
    #6