I am getting a Core2Quad Q6600 with a Asus P5K-E motherboard to replace my Celeron D 340 and MachSpeed Motherboard. I wanted to know how to clone my XP installation to the new motherboard and processor. I know I had done this before I think by running a repair install and it worked. My question now: 1. Any easier way? 2. I cloned my XP drive to another hard drive to be able to play around with it. After that, it booted fine in the original computer but when I put it in another computer, I have no HDD activity and the blinking dash (-) at the top left of the screen for ever and it doesn't attempt to load Windows XP. If I try to run a repair, it just takes me to the install XP page, it doesn't detect the previous install and doesn't give me an option to repair. What should I do to fix this? I have so much stuff on my hard drive that if I think about reformatting, I feel like I shouldn't even get a new motherboard/processor.
You couls try to stick it in another PC with XP already installed and try to back up your data. That's the best thing to do ALWAYS. Next time make a different partition for your DATA and a different one for your OS.
my advice download the demo of "paragon justboot corrector". Use that to bootup your computer. Now look for your windows xp partition, make sure your drive letter is c: drive (or whatever it was when installed on the other motherboard). With windows xp, when you clone a hard drive, sometimes the drive letters well get changed around. For instance your cdrom can end up being c: and your system drive d: drive etc. Something as simple as a misplaced drive letter will cause your harddrive not to bootup. Repair installations will not fix a wrong drive letter, you need to get into the registry of the non-booting hard drive and change it manually. demo here http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/JustBoot_Boot_Corrector_38938_p/ directions to change drive letters http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=174958
Does that program allow for chipset model changes? Most of the time I seem to remember if you change chipset manufacturer there's nothing you can do to save your XP install. What's the model of the Machspeed board? If it had an Intel chipset you might be alright, anything else and I think you're out of luck.
It is a Via chipset on the Mach Speed board and the other board has an Intel chipset. I do remember though that I used a hard drive from a Dell on my Mach Speed board, did a repair and it worked fine. After that, I put it back in the dell by doing a repair and that drive is working fine. This was 2 years ago though. Model of Mach Speed is PT88AS
You're not always screwed if the chipsets are different, but it is usually the case. I'd imagine going from a VIA to an Intel you may have problems. No harm in trying though I suppose.
I am going to follow jony218's advice and try the drive letter change. I also went ahead and created a backup image of my hard drive. I am going to try to use the clone of XP that I already used and run the software jony218 recommended but I doubt that will work because I uninstalled all drivers with the name "via" in them. If that doesn't work, I will restore the image on the drive, run the software and get back to you on how it works.
Here's how it goes. I did a complete backup of the system and made a backup image. Then I put that hard drive and the one the data will be written to into the computer to be cloned. I then restored the data to the hard drive. I started it and got the Blue Screen (Yey, Success, lol). After that, I ran a repair install of Windows XP and it was fine until about 30 minutes left. It started to fail to copy files. The files were right there, but it would not copy them. How do I fix this? I NEED TO CLONE THIS!!!!!
Are you trying to backup your data onto a volume formatted using FAT32? FAT32 can't process large files and can be problematic for backups for this reason.
I backed up a 200GB NTFS (65GB Full) To a NTFS 250GB (147 Free). Then put the 250 into another computer along with an empty 80GB. I booted up with the Acronics CD and choose restore. I restored the backup to the 80GB, formatted NTFS. The restore page says: Disk Partition Recovery from Archive From file: "C:\Celly.tib" Operation 1 of 1 Restoring partition Hard disk: 2 Drive letter: C: -> E: File System: NTFS Volume label: Windows XP Size: 130.7 GB -> 74.5 GB
Ok, I finally got it. I did all as my previous post (restore backup to 80GB) but this time, before I loaded into the new PC, I took it back to the old one and restored the default IDE drivers. Now it loaded XP on the new motheboard. Is there any utility I could use to clean up all the old drivers that I do not need or to old hardware?
