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

[Chris Scheers]

Steven Schweda wrote:
>> [...] 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.

Actually, you tend to get many different disk drivers installed. 
However, once Windows enumerates the hardware, unused ones generally get 
disabled.

When migrating a Windows system disk to different hardware, it may be 
necessary to reenable some of the more generic disk drivers before 
booting on the new hardware.  This may require fiddling the registry.

Another option may be to SYSPREP the disk first.  I would do this on a 
copy.  I haven't tried this path yet (except in a VM), but I suspect 
that it would work.

-- 
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Chris Scheers, Applied Synergy, Inc.

Voice: 817-237-3360            Internet: chris at applied-synergy.com
   Fax: 817-237-3074