Windows 7: Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer

Nice one Kari, well done.

Thanks, Dave & Jim!

An interesting discovery you made !

But the following I don't understand :

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"Boot the PC from sysprep generalized hard disk." (step 7)
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How is this done ? Could you add a nice image from the boot process to make clear what I have to do/select and what happens ?

Booting from sysprepped HDD means that when you have sysprepped your HDD, you boot using that HDD and Windows installed on it.

Nice work Kari.

Great work Kari

It will be enormously helpful !!!

Agreed, I have no idea why Microsoft has not added a few command line switches to let sysprep keep the personal settings if needed.

BTW Kari : welcome to Germany !

Two further questions :
1. If I ran the sysprep command on my machine can I still boot it normally ?
I simply want to be sure I can work on with my old system if the process
fails for some reason or I am not able to grasp it.
2. You talk about using 3rd party imaging software.
Isn't possible to use the Microsoft system image procedure because I normally
use this ?

Please allow me to add a link to a ( not very professional ) thread I added in
a forum in which I try to talk about my experience with transferring a running Windows 7 to another computer.
Alas, it is in German. But perhaps your German is fine to be able to muddle through my lines of text...
Klonen laufendes System auf Rechner mit anderer Hardware.

Thanks. I've been here quite a long time already

Yes, you can boot completely normally. Just remember that generalizing removes all hardware related drivers, deletes the activation, resets the SID and so on (list of what sysprep generalizing causes towards the end of tutorial). So the first boot after running sysprep, also on an old system, is an OOBE first run meaning it's like booting the computer first time.

I'm talking about third party imaging software because as far as I know, when not booted to Windows, normal or safe mode, you can run Windows Backup and Restore only to restore an image but not to create one. At least I have not found a way to create an image when booting for instance with installation or recovery DVD.

As you certainly understand, booting to Windows to run Windows Backup to create the image would make this whole process useless because booting a sysprepped system first time reinstalls most if not all of the drivers.

When writing the tutorial, I thought about "staying Microsoft", to show how this would be done in a corporate environment using available Microsoft tools, but decided against because there are so many simple third party alternatives available for creating an image. This tutorial is not for network pros deploying tens of images using command line tools; they do not need my limited knowledge or this tutorial to show how to do this. This is just a simple tutorial for a normal user who do not even need to know what deploying means.

In other words, I tried to keep it simple.

This tutorial is mostly thought to be used when you keep your old HD upgrading other hardware, or you transfer your old HD from old computer to a new computer. Method 2, how to transfer an existing Windows installation to a new HD is more out of curiosity for those who know how to create and transfer an image.

The easiest (and I think only) way to do this with Seven's own Backup and Restore would be first to sysprep the Windows installation, then mount the HD to a new computer, boot once normally, run Windows Backup and Restore to create an image, dismount the HD and mount a new one, boot with Seven installation DVD and finally choosing repair options > restore an image.(Now when I read what I'm writing I'm wondering why I left this simple alternate method away from tutorial. I'm going to add it.)

My wife is an Ossie who only speaks German, some Russian and 6 words of Finnish, so yes I can manage with German Reading your long post on that German forum I think your problem has been exactly what using sysprep eliminates: hardware drivers.

Kari



EDIT: Method three added.

Nice tutorial Kari.