Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer

Hi,
I've looked thru your sysprep guide and it seems quite straite forward...

It does not seem to work in my case since I didnt make a clean installation, in my case I installed from IBM recovery DVD with drivers. And then modify according to my customers requirements, network settings and software.
As I mentioned in my post it starts using IBM sysprep answer file, don't want OOBE at all when I start.
It would be nice if I didnt have it, only want to transfer local admin profile to default user and have have normal login screen when I start my image on new computer that I have recovered to.

this is very useful, thx

Well unfortunately it didnt work for me, not sure why not but i kept getting a BSOD on windows splash screen. I did follow the steps, but before I did the sysprep I cloned my Hd (from a 150gb 10k to a 300gb 10k), so I did the method 1 and after the sysprep I shutdown, built the new pc installed hd, booted and was welcomed to the please select safe mode, etc. Selected normal windows and splash screen came up and just as it was going into the login it gave me a BSOD, but so fast that i couldnt read it. I tried it a couple more times and same thing, I tried safe mode and nada.

I then re-installed windows (clean install) since I did clone the original drive.

Now my question is since I upgraded the system, changing the MB, RAM, and Video card, I would like that PC to be the main PC, but I need to transfer files from the original hd (150gb) to the new one. Secondly, I can boot back up with the 150 in another case with the same setup as before, installing device drivers of course...and with that I can back files up for transfer but how do I transfer, pull the drive and put it in external enclosure? which i normally do or hmm

Kari said:

It simply means that if you want to transfer your Windows installation as it is, with applications and user profiles intact, to A) a new hard disk in your old computer, or B) to a completely new computer, you should do this:

• Boot your old computer normally to Windows
• Follow the steps 1 through 5 in method 1
• When sysprep is finished and computer shut down, boot it from an imaging CD/DVD. DO NOT BOOT NORMALLY TO WINDOWS!
• Now create a system image. Notice that this image contains at this point a complete image of your generalized Windows, ready to be booted "first time". Use external HD to store the image
• Shut down the computer

Now you have two choices, depending on what you are doing:

1. If you are changing hard disk to your old computer, do it now, then boot again from imaging CD/DVD and restore image to this new, virgin hd in your old computer. Boot then your computer normally from HD which now contains a generalized image of your old Windows setup
2. If you are transferring you Windows setup to a new computer, boot it with imaging CD/DVD and restore the image to its HD. Boot then the new computer normally from HD which now contains a generalized image of your old Windows setup

In both above mentioned scenarios you have restored a generalized image of your Windows setup to a new HD. Go back to tutorial method 1 following it from step 7 to the end, and you are done.

Kari

ok gonna give this a shot, creating an image and boot to imaging cd, and restore....had to think about those steps first and think I have an idea of how to do it.

keep ya posted

Well that didnt work either, off to be try again in the morning

ForrestHK said:

Got the problem solved!! Finally...

I actually don't know how it worked, but i did the following.
1) installing the following hotfix on my another system on the same computer:
A Windows 7 or a Windows Server 2008 R2 image deployment process stops when you try to deploy the image on another computer

(I think it is irrelevant but worth a try, if you got no working system on your new computer just leave it alone)

2) bring up the Windows 7 installation disk, enter repair mode, for me it first only indicated there is one system installed and a window popped out asked me an error is occurred should it repair, click ok, and two systems appeared on the repair screen. then when i clicked to repair the system with my moved HDD it said no problem found, then I clicked restart.

3) This time even i didn't change the Bios to set my primary device as the moved harddisk, the installed windows on my computer detected my system on my moved HDD, and it enters the selection screen between the 2 systems. I booted it in Safe mode, same error. then restart.

4) Select the Moved system on the selection screen with the "down arrow", press F8 on the selection screen, then i pressed "Enable Boot logging". Then the moved system runs the screen just as previous boot ups (like the screens on step 5), but this time, without any errors!!!

That's what i did to make it work, i believe there are a lot of steps unneeded, but just in case i typed it all out. You know, Windows...

Thanks Kari for the tutorial and quick support, and good luck for tarrax.

Forrest

Well I tried this and didnt work either, #4 kindof threw me off but figured it out, though results was still the same BSOD. Not having any luck here.

Ok let me put down what I am doing maybe there's something else not right....

1) First I cloned my drive onto the new drive, so I can have a backup in case of failure, which has happened three times already.

2) I booted, in the same PC (not the new one) with the newly cloned HD and logged in and everything else, waited til all was up and created an Image Boot CD with Acronis

3) Then I started shutting down startup files, and all that was open in the task bar, as Kari said might be a good idea to do that.

4) Ran Sysprep tool to a tee, well prior to that I stopped the WMPnetwroksvc. System shutdown and I pulled the drive out and put it in New PC.

5) Boot up PC, with Boot Image CD and get the following:

Starting Acronis Loader
Acronis Loader fatal error: Boot drive (partition) not found. Press enter to try to boot your OS...

6) I rebooted (c+a+d) with W7 install dvd and clicked on repair, it came up with couldnt find partition and asked for repair which I did and restarted, but at Boot up to the Boot Image CD still got the same error "Boot drive (partition) not found", tried to go to OC with Enter and now get the "Windows error recovery" screen.

7) In the windows error recovery screen I clicked on Start Windows normally and get to the Windows splash screen as it is loading, then the circled dots (that turn to squares) stopped and it gave me a BSOD, which was too fast to read. It rebooted and came to the same screen as before and selected safe mode, which looked like it was going to work but stopped at disk.sys and BSOD with which I stared at and it looked like it said "stop 0x00" or something like that.

and thats about where I am at the moment, STUCK. and I am broadcasting live on justin tv so I gotta have this thing working, though I still have the back up which I will use. until I get an answer or some HELP!!

Gerry

Kari may have better advice but when I can't get SysPrep to work I move the HD or it's image to the new hardware, then run Paragon Adaptive Restore CD on it to Adjust to New Hardware.

Works every time, unless the install has been corrupted by bad SysPrep.

ok but isnt that also booting up to an image boot cd? already done that.

Hd is already moved, does it have to be Paragon? why?

If Win7 stalls at the boot animation on new hardware it is because of driver or other conflicts which are removed by successful SysPrep, or by Paragon Adaptive Restore CD.

The only other method is applying an image with Acronis True Image 10+ with Universal REstore, however it only works about half the time for me.