Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer

Hi Kari,

Your article is an excellent article.

Last night did the sysprep from HP Workstation z230 to z440, moved the sysprep(ed) hdd to z440, but found a problem, sysprep hard disk is not accepting USB input (both keyboard and mouse) during the initial setup,(yes the USB keyboard and mouse is working with z230, and also working in the z440 bios). I am force to have a PS2 keyboard and mouse to complete the setup in z440 PC.

What could be wrong here?

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to Seven Forums APK. I'm sure Kari will have some thoughts when he's on next. A Guy

APK said:

Hi Kari,

Your article is an excellent article.

Last night did the sysprep from HP Workstation z230 to z440, moved the sysprep(ed) hdd to z440, but found a problem, sysprep hard disk is not accepting USB input (both keyboard and mouse) during the initial setup,(yes the USB keyboard and mouse is working with z230, and also working in the z440 bios). I am force to have a PS2 keyboard and mouse to complete the setup in z440 PC.

What could be wrong here?

Thanks in advance.

Hi APK, welcome to the Seven Forums.

I must tell you that I am not sure why that happens. The USB devices should work the default built-in Windows drivers even after the Sysprep / generalize command has removed all hardware drivers, as they do for instance when you do a clean install of Windows.

The fact that the PS2 keyboard works supports the theory that the issue is the USB drivers, not the keyboard and mouse drivers.

I will try to find more information about this. After the initial setup, is the transferred Windows working OK on the new computer, with the USB mouse and keyboard?

Kari

I am sorry but I am totally unable to find anything useful to help you. I tested this once again and I have no issues to get the USB mouse and keyboard to work.

A workaround that might work for you is to simple use the PS2 keyboard or on-screen keyboard when setting the PC up, USB mouse and keyboard being disconnected. When Windows then boots to desktop first time, install the chipset drivers, reboot and now install the USB drivers. Again reboot and connect the USB mouse and keyboard.

It should work and works in my tests.

You might also want to see if some third party software would be better for you. Here's an example: System restore to new hardware to upgrade your computer or migrate system

I will continue trying to find something.

sndflea said:

I am trying to move my HD from a custom built PC to a Dell. Followed Method 1 and everything worked fine. I can not, however, access by User Profiles. When I log in I get an error message stating they were not accessable and that a Temporary profile is being set up. During the reboot, I renamed to PC - could this be the cause of this error?

Hi Sndflea, welcome to the Seven Forums.

That is the reason for your issue. The long username, as the system sees it is always ComputerName\Username.

Let's say you old computer name is MyPC and your username Flea. This makes your username MyPC\Flea which cannot be found anymore. At the moment Windows sees itself as a new installation on a new computer, not as a transferred old existing Windows. If you renamed the PC as MyOtherPC, the system is now using and searching for usernames like MyOtherPC\Flea, seeing the username MyPC\Flea as belonging to a another computer.

The best thing to do now would be a complete reinstall. An alternative is to copy all personal data (Documents, Pictures, Videos, Music, Favorites, Saved games and so on) from the old user profile folders to a backup location, remove the old user folders, then re-create the user accounts on the new setup, sign in once to each of the new re-created user account and immediately sign out from them, and finally using the admin account you created during the first boot of that Dell copy the personal data back to new profiles from the backup.

For future readers of this, please keep in mind that when transferring Windows to a new computer you can only change the details and system information like the PC name after you have finished the process and booted to desktop. This should of course be logical.

Kari

That's good, that is a good solution.

About the missing drivers, that's the whole point of this procedure!

The Sysprep /GENERALIZE command on the old setup completely removes all hardware related information, including the drivers for that hardware setup, in order to allow you to transfer the Windows to a completely different hardware. It would not work if the drivers for the old setup would still be there.

When Windows is then booted first time on the new hardware it runs the so called OOBE First Run boot, installing the default drivers. It's then up to you as the user to check which drivers might need to be manually reinstalled. Usually Windows 7 is quite good in finding the correct drivers by itself; before starting to install new drivers let the Windows Update run a few times until it finds no more updates, every time checking the otional updates, too.

Kari