Making a windows disc complete with updates

Hi Rich. That is exactly what I thought would solve the problem. Sorry to keep bothering you guys, because you have been super great help, but to make a drive smaller, do I need to do this by software, or can I just do it through windows.

Also, when lets say, I put the image on a new laptop, and lets say the hard drive is 250gb, will that hard drive then become 80GB, or stay at 250gb, and if it does become 80GB, how do I find the rest of the memory.

Again, sorry to be a pain, but I have never done this before

I thought in your first post you said you were using Macrium Reflect?

If you're instead using Win7 backup imaging and you shrink your source Win7 partition to a size smaller than the target space then you can Extend it later in Disk Mgmt.

I see our Macrium expert is in the thread so let's see what Wolfgang says.

Hi, I am using Macrium yes. My last question was on how to make the partition of your main drive smaller

Clean it up by uninstalling any unwanted programs, using CCleaner to delete temp and other unneeded files, and other steps same as for Cleaning Up Factory Bloatware.

Then shrink it in Disk Mgmt: Partition or Volume - Shrink

If it doesn't shrink enough then use Partition Wizard bootable CD, the most valuable tool we use here:
Partition Wizard Resize Partition Video Help.

Thank you very much for the help. Both of you, I really appreciate it.
I will get this to work correctly at some point! haha

Hey Guys, I just thought it would be nice to end this topic saying that I tested the image on a new system, and it worked fine, so I am realy happy.

The only weird thing that happend was, the new laptop had the wireless driver installed from the previous laptop, but still worked, even though the two laptops where completely different makes of machines, but I am going to guess that was a lucky coinsidence, as the driver worked and the laptop runs on wireless fine.
I will test on another computer later when I get time to see if it happens again

Anyway, thank you for the help, and hopefully other users can use this threat to solve problems too!

Did you SysPrep the image as suggested to remove all the drivers, activation, hardware and Security ID's that can interfere when reimaging to new hardware?

If not then it will not boot on most new hardware as that is only a rare occurence.

Oh, ya know, I totally forgot about that. I was up late last night preparing this and it totally slipped my mind.

A quick question on that. You said do it before you take an image of the hard drive, but when I read the instructions, it says to fit the new hard drive first (In my case, just a new laptop).

I think I understand what you mean though, follow method 2 on the link, drop all the drivers first, then take an image.

I will do that now as I need to do the same for a new OS.

Thanks

You need to SysPrep the source OS for the image.

Hi again. So, I started up a computer, fully updated with Vista Premium. I did the Sysprep. It did whatever it had too, restarted etc. I had to make a new user account and all.

I logged onto the original account, and all the screen res etc was changed. I then made a image of the hard drive and transferred it over. The same happened again though. The original laptop had a wireless driver installed straight after the format anyway, I did not need to source one. So even with sysprep, the wireless driver was installed. I transferred the data over and again, this laptop had the wireless installed. Again, the laptop is a completely different make, but the wireless once more worked.

I think I did Sysprep correctly.

I am using SlimDrivers to update the rest of the drivers that are either missing or out of date. The laptop seems fine, so maybe, just maybe this again had the same wireless card inside.

I guess I will know more, when I do the same on a Win 7 image, and see what results happen