Re: Recovery from obsolete BIOS

Thanks, Bob, for the complete run-down. And to others
for pitching in.
Bill L.

Bob Harris wrote:
As others have replied, you need a real XP CD to perform a repair, and that is almost 100% required when switching hardware.

Further, even if you get that to work, XP's activation will sense the new hardware and give you something like 3 days to activate or stop working. If the underlying version of XP is OEM, it is not meant to be transferred and re-activation will probably fail.

You have begun to realize that "price" for using OEM/pre-installed versions of XP: They are good only on the hardware on which they were originally installed!

All that said, you should still be able to recover personal files, including any programs that you downloaded and saved as installers (like SETUP.EXE, or *.MSI). GHOST has an option to mount an image as a file system, afterwhich you can simply copy&paste files/folders from the image back onto the hard drive of the new PC.

But, as a matter of organization/safety you should separate personal files from the operating system and installed programs. Separate partitions are one of the best ways to accomplish this. Personal files may be irreplaceable, but a PC+OS can always be purchased for some price, and not a very high one these days. Further, once separated, you can backup your personal files by a simple copy&paste, or by the command line program XCOPY, which comes with XP. An external USB disk, DVDs, etc are good places to stroe a backup copy of personal files. Hard drive imaging, like GHOST, is only required for the system partition. Most users have a much larger volume of personal files than system files, but the persoal files do not tend to change frequently; it is more common to add to them than to change them. And, additions occur frequently, almost daily. In contrast, operating system changes occur about once a month (via XP update). You might also want to backup your favorites, which can be done via a simple copy&paste.

"William B. Lurie" <billurie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:479287EC.3070405@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Kind of an old and sensitive subject, but here goes.
I have hard drives with backup drive images made on
a machine which died and was replaced by a new machine.
I am able to restore Ghost 10 'recovery points' made
on the new machine, but the new machine refuses to boot
using old 'recovery points' made on the old machine.
It's not a matter of licensing or product codes.

I can just hope that I'll never *have* to run the OS
from the old machine, or I can hope that somebody will
guide me to a way to make an old drive image or
'recovery point' boot on a machine with different BIOS.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Recovery from obsolete BIOS
    ... All that said, you should still be able to recover personal files, including any programs that you downloaded and saved as installers. ... Further, once separated, you can backup your personal files by a simple copy&paste, or by the command line program XCOPY, which comes with XP. ... I have hard drives with backup drive images made on ... I am able to restore Ghost 10 'recovery points' made ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: Recovery from obsolete BIOS
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