Finally!

[pentium]

For a little over a year now I have been trying to piece together a new system for my parents.
Their current one is dead slow (put lightly) and the page file is MASSIVE!

Anyways, a new 20 gig drive came in and that finished off the checklist.
After uing the windows settings transfer wizard to back up ereryone's profiles to the server I shut the systemm down and and put it's old drive in the new system as the slave to the 20 gig master (so you could still get files that were not transfered over). Four hours later the new system was fully up and running with little fuss although we had to call M$ because xp would not activate.
My parents are happy. They can now run google earth (hint to how old the video card was) and boot time now takes about two minuets from power-on to logged in and idle compared to thirty minuets.
What's my pay for this?
I'm being driven to Vancouver tomorrow to pick up a Silicon Graphics Crimson, Onyx and Indigo2. With that much power, I should have control over the world by thursday!

[WNG]

Re: Finally!

30 minutes?!?!?!

Ok, now I know who to send the bill for global warming.

[stevo1210]

Re: Finally!

Four hours later the new system was fully up and running with little fuss although we had to call M$ because xp would not activate.

I really hate that part...... I don't get the point of calling microsoft to reactivate my Windows copy because of a re-installation and some hardware changes....
I think it should all be done online to save me the hassle of wasting money on a phone call.

[willawake]

Re: Finally!

windows settings transfer wizard

new comp deserves new install
since we have a half assed job you should be taken half the way to vancouver and walk the rest

[pentium]

Re: Finally!

I used the wizard to move stuff like email addresses, favourites and not whole programs which can just be reinstalled. I was careful about that.

[gonzo0815]

Re: Finally!

I usually just replace the HDD driver, then do some image copy and give it a chance to work with the new system.
And as long as the system was not totally fucked up with worms, trojans or other crappy stuff before, it worked for me many times.
I think WXP and W2k are stable enough for such things.
Sure, it will give you not this speed feeling, you will have after a fresh installation, but I prefer this than going to the hassle to install all the required programs again.

[pentium]

Re: Finally!

I was not reusing that hard drive.
It was starting to fail and it felt like that it lacked any sort of cache.

[gonzo0815]

Re: Finally!

I certainly do not use older HDD`s again, thus i use some partition copy tools like Acronis or even Ghost to mirror it to the new drive.
Especially Acronis is quite nice, you can save a drive image over network by windwos network shares.
I just omit the os reinstall.

[WNG]

Re: Finally!

Acronis is very good. Everyone should create a disk image after they finish a fresh install. Plus whenever new sw/hw is installed, do a backup image right before.
You can get a copy of Disk Image for free.
Go to Seagate's website and download it. It's called Disk Wizard, but it's a renamed copy of Acronis Disk Image. (which version I don't know)

[Paul S]

Re: Finally!

I see that Disk Wizard is a Windows executable.

If you want a disk imager that will work on any OS, try Boot It Next Generation (aka Bing). It will install itself on a small partition, and you can copy the image to DVDs or another hard drive. It is also a boot manager, if you need one.

It is share ware, so after 30 days it stops automatically booting the default system. I just uninstall it until I need it again.

A small tip. The copied image usually is not bootable, at first. I have a generic WinXP boot floppy for the first boot. Then go to Disk Management, right click on the disk, and choose to "Mark Partition as Active".

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/