Dual booting / System Ghosting question

Hi all,

My main desktop is a W7 installation but my partner still works from a laptop with XP installed.
She has a port replicator connected to my monitor and both our computers feed into it.

I was wondering if this scenario is possible;

Create a disc image of her system and install it on a new drive within my tower. (this will also have the added bonus of convincing her that we need a new bigger monitor!! )

Dual boot W7 and XP.

Curveball;
Is there a way to allow her laptop to ghost the main install so that all files are synced or alternatively allow a ghosting of the whole installation?

The motivation behind this is that should she need to go away - always has a day or so notice, she can just pick up her laptop and know that when she opens it up she will just be able to carry on.

Curveball 2;
The laptop is a dell, so will all the drivers and bloatware that is on her install cause issues if the disc image is installed onto a desktop?

(before anyone asks, I have a retail XP licence which I will rely on for EULA etc.)

Thanks in advance.

I'm quite sure there will be a problem with the drivers using ghost. The image of the dell laptop will not work on your other computer.
What I would suggest is install a fresh new windows xp in dual boot on your home computer and install one of those softwares that allows you to automatically sync certain folders between several computers. You can also find those kind of syncing softwares for internet bookmarks.

saverio said:

Hi all,

My main desktop is a W7 installation but my partner still works from a laptop with XP installed.
She has a port replicator connected to my monitor and both our computers feed into it.

I was wondering if this scenario is possible;

Create a disc image of her system and install it on a new drive within my tower. (this will also have the added bonus of convincing her that we need a new bigger monitor!! )

Dual boot W7 and XP.

Curveball;
Is there a way to allow her laptop to ghost the main install so that all files are synced or alternatively allow a ghosting of the whole installation? you can ghost the entire instaallation but sync'ing wont work this way. You can get 3rd party apps to keep the files sync'ed or just use one set of files that both of you work on.

The motivation behind this is that should she need to go away - always has a day or so notice, she can just pick up her laptop and know that when she opens it up she will just be able to carry on.

Curveball 2;
The laptop is a dell, so will all the drivers and bloatware that is on her install cause issues if the disc image is installed onto a desktop? YES thats why ghosting wont work

(before anyone asks, I have a retail XP licence which I will rely on for EULA etc.)

Thanks in advance.

Savero

Wont work this way. just pouring the image back onto the main machine doesn't account for the different MBR's, drivers, HD size, and partition number.

You cant "ghost" all the files because she is using a different OS, and you can keep the data sync'ed in other ways

good luck

ken

thanks guys, somehow I knew it wasn't going to be that easy!

The main tools she has are a soft phone, which is installed from her IT people remotely, and apparently it has real issues with vista - hence running on XP.

If it was a mac, then that would have made life way easier, as she could have used the laptop as a target disc and just had all her files native on that, and all I'd have to do was sync the bookmarks on shutdown.

I'd kill for that feature in Windows - it's superb and really does allow the integration of desktop and laptop... oh well, maybe windows 8!