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

[David Froble]

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.

What you might have run into here is "good news and bad news".  The good 
news, lots of HW aimed at weendoze.  The bad news, some of it has it's 
own drivers, and they are not in the weendoze distribution.

For example, say you put together a system using an Asus motherboard. 
It will have a socket for a CPU, and some other stuff on the board for 
disk interface, maybe video interface, and such.  The motherboard will 
come with a CD with drivers.  Most will run the generic weendoze stuff, 
but to get full performance you install and use the custom drivers.

Then there can be fun.  I recently got a new motherboard, which claimed 
to support weendoze XP.  However, it didn't, and when I called the 
vendor, they claimed that it did support XP, but I'd have to find the 
proper disk drivers, which I never did.  Damn lying $%&#@%$ ....