Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer

Hi MickeeJay, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Sysprep always targets the host, computer and Windows installation it is run. You can not sysprep an external drive. I think your friends best shot would be to reinstall on new motherboard.

Kari

Just wanted to say thank you for this great tutorial Kari. I am replacing the motherboard and PSU in my older PC and will do a sysrep on the OS drive before I start.

LittleJay said:

Just wanted to say thank you for this great tutorial Kari. I am replacing the motherboard and PSU in my older PC and will do a sysrep on the OS drive before I start.

Thanks, Jay.

Read the tutorial first, before starting. I have noticed that the WMP Network Service I tell about at the end of the tutorial is often causing restoring the image to fail, even when there was no error message when sysprepping. Therefore I recommend always to stop said service as told in tutorial before sysprepping.

Kari

Kari said:

LittleJay said:

Just wanted to say thank you for this great tutorial Kari. I am replacing the motherboard and PSU in my older PC and will do a sysrep on the OS drive before I start.

Thanks, Jay.

Read the tutorial first, before starting. I have noticed that the WMP Network Service I tell about at the end of the tutorial is often causing restoring the image to fail, even when there was no error message when sysprepping. Therefore I recommend always to stop said service as told in tutorial before sysprepping.

Kari

As a precaution, I've made a small batch file to automate this and starting the SysPrep itself.

Code:

NET stop WMPNetworkSvc
cd /d "%windir%\system32\Sysprep\"
Sysprep.exe

oreo27 said:

Kari said:

LittleJay said:

Just wanted to say thank you for this great tutorial Kari. I am replacing the motherboard and PSU in my older PC and will do a sysrep on the OS drive before I start.

Thanks, Jay.

Read the tutorial first, before starting. I have noticed that the WMP Network Service I tell about at the end of the tutorial is often causing restoring the image to fail, even when there was no error message when sysprepping. Therefore I recommend always to stop said service as told in tutorial before sysprepping.

Kari

As a precaution, I've made a small batch file to automate this and starting the SysPrep itself.

Code:

NET stop WMPNetworkSvc
cd /d "%windir%\system32\Sysprep\"
Sysprep.exe

That's a good idea. Very good indeed.

It is a mystery to me why sysprep hates WMP Network Sharing Service. I have studied and researched and tried everything, I simply can not find a logical explanation.

Fact remains: Most common reason for sysprep to fail, excluding of course faulty answer files, is the said service.

Kari

Kari said:

LittleJay said:

Just wanted to say thank you for this great tutorial Kari. I am replacing the motherboard and PSU in my older PC and will do a sysrep on the OS drive before I start.

Thanks, Jay.

Read the tutorial first, before starting. I have noticed that the WMP Network Service I tell about at the end of the tutorial is often causing restoring the image to fail, even when there was no error message when sysprepping. Therefore I recommend always to stop said service as told in tutorial before sysprepping.

Kari

Thanks Kari. I did the sysrep last night and I read the section about WMP Service. I tried running sysrep first without stopping the service, but I did get the error message, so I had to. After that sysrep did its thing without any problems.

@ oreo27 I will keep the batch file you wrote in mind, should I ever need to do another sysrep. Thanks much!

[QUOTE=Kari;2267657][QUOTE=oreo27;2267602]

Kari said:

It is a mystery to me why sysprep hates WMP Network Sharing Service. I have studied and researched and tried everything, I simply can not find a logical explanation.

Fact remains: Most common reason for sysprep to fail, excluding of course faulty answer files, is the said service.

Kari

I guess it's just one of those mysteries :)

This tutorial really saved my hide once. I don't keep disc images since I don't have the disk capacity to do so. Then one day, I managed to screw my installation up with Ccleaner. Instead of formatting again, what I did was made a new installation with most of the applications I have in a Virtual Machine. Sysprepped and imaged that using start (You guys should really check out this great imaging tool). Restored said image and voila, I was back in business instead of having more or less a week of no PC usage due to installations and such.

I wouldn't even have learned what SysPrep is if not for this tutorial.

LittleJay said:

@ oreo27 I will keep the batch file you wrote in mind, should I ever need to do another sysrep. Thanks much!

No worries. I honestly wouldn't even call it a batch file. It's just 3 lines of what appears to be code :)

oreo27 said:

No worries. I honestly wouldn't even call it a batch file. It's just 3 lines of what appears to be code :)

... and it could be reduced to two lines .

CD command (Change Directory, the word we used earlier for Folder) is not needed when the command has the full path included, so this would be enough:

Code:

NET stop WMPNetworkSvc
"%windir%\system32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe"

Kari

Kari said:

oreo27 said:

No worries. I honestly wouldn't even call it a batch file. It's just 3 lines of what appears to be code :)

... and it could be reduced to two lines .

CD command (Change Directory, the word we used earlier for Folder) is not needed when the command has the full path included, so this would be enough:

Code:

NET stop WMPNetworkSvc
"%windir%\system32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe"

Kari

Good eye. I didn't notice that was the old batch I had.