[Info-vax] Do you (or someone you work with) sysman on Windows?

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] Why do they always rebuild the system disk from
> scratch??? 

   I know nothing, but I have a dim memory of trying to
transplant a Windows XP disk from one system to a different
system -- that is, same OS, different hardware.  The disk
initially appeared bootable in the new system, but Windows
seemed to have the old hardware path to the disk burned into
its brain (somewhere in the Registry? -- I don't know), so it
never got beyond the initial step or two, failing with some
uninformative error message.

   After considerable Web searching, I managed to get the
required driver for the disk adapter in the new system
installed while the disk was still on the old system, and
after only a few hours, I got the thing to boot on the new
system.

   I've forgotten most of the details (of which there were
many), but I was left with the firm impression that this sort
of disk transplant was impractical with Windows, contrary to
my experience with MacOS and VMS, where it was a trivial
exercise.

   Windows, with its support of nearly unlimited device
types, seems to install support for only the immediately
required devices on a system during installation, not for
all of them.  Thus, moving a disk from one hardware
environment to a different one seems to be a major operation.
Installing Windows from scratch on the new system may _seem_
inefficient, unless you've tried doing it the "easy" way.