WinXP: Possible to use Sysprep to use images between Intel and AMD systems?

[JEDI]

I have an Intel p3 image. I just got a AMD Sempron system.

I don't want to reload everything over again.

I used Sysprep, then moved the hard drive from my p3 system to the Sempron system.

It automatically rebooted. When i went in Safe mode, it stopped when trying to load AGP440 driver.

Is it possible to port my hd over, or I am doomed in reinstalling everything?

If it is possibile, any other tips/suggestions?

THX!

 

[Budman]

You could always try a repair install.

 

[thegorx]

Reinstall, do it right the first time, most shortcuts don't save any time.

you spend more time try to get the bugs out

 

[hopejr]

SysPrep was designed for systems with almost identical specs (ie different brands of burner won't make a difference), but as soon as it's a different chipset, CPU, or GPU, you're asking for trouble AFAIK.

 

[spyordie007]

I've never done it with that big of a hardware differance, but think you could still do it. You would just have to feed it all the drivers when it prompts you coming out of the mini-setup.

I do agree with thegorx though; you should really consider a "fresh" install.

 

[NightCrawler]

1. Move hard drive to sempron machine
2. Put WinXP cd in drive boot to it then choose to repair that windows install.

It will delete all the drivers and system config and start from scratch but all your apps will still be installed.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: hopejr
SysPrep was designed for systems with almost identical specs (ie different brands of burner won't make a difference), but as soon as it's a different chipset, CPU, or GPU, you're asking for trouble AFAIK.

That's not correct. Sysprep (Win2k, latest version, and XP, all versions) are designed for all changes in hardware (including disk device drivers) except the HAL. My guess is the OP has 2 computers with different HALs.

 

[JEDI]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: hopejr
SysPrep was designed for systems with almost identical specs (ie different brands of burner won't make a difference), but as soon as it's a different chipset, CPU, or GPU, you're asking for trouble AFAIK.

That's not correct. Sysprep (Win2k, latest version, and XP, all versions) are designed for all changes in hardware (including disk device drivers) except the HAL. My guess is the OP has 2 computers with different HALs.

whats's a HAL?

 

[hopejr]

HAL = Hardware Abstraction Layer IIRC

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: hopejr
HAL = Hardware Abstraction Layer IIRC

Right. Basically what shows up under Device Mgr / Computer must match on both.

 

[HTRednek]

The only other alternative (and I strongly don't recomend it) is to delete each entry in the device manager before you shut down the old system, transfer the drive and boot the new system. Windows will rebuild the device manager and try to load drivers for everything it finds. You will still have to load drivers for all the hardware windows can't identify. Even if you manage to do this it still leaves registry and other issues. My experience is this only works about 50% of the time with the other 50% left with unusable or very unstable systems. It will also usually trigger XP activation again. BY the time you goto all that trouble you could install everything fresh with much less hassle.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: HTRednek
The only other alternative (and I strongly don't recomend it) is to delete each entry in the device manager before you shut down the old system, transfer the drive and boot the new system. Windows will rebuild the device manager and try to load drivers for everything it finds. You will still have to load drivers for all the hardware windows can't identify. Even if you manage to do this it still leaves registry and other issues. My experience is this only works about 50% of the time with the other 50% left with unusable or very unstable systems. It will also usually trigger XP activation again. BY the time you goto all that trouble you could install everything fresh with much less hassle.

That's not correct.

Windows XP can PnP anything except the driver you use to boot the machine (the hard disk driver) and the HAL. If the HAL changes, as I suspect happened here, you're out of luck - no ifs, ands, or buts, with Sysprep or by deleting Device Manager entries. You can try a repair install, of course.

If the hard disk driver changes, and you still have the old machine, and the disk is still bootable in the old machine, there are all kinds of things you can do to fix the issue - stick in a PCI IDE card to use to boot on both boxes temporarily or whatnot.

Keeping old drivers around isn't an issue at all - it's not really a big deal. Keeping lots of old or useless programs around that keep running can be annoying, I'll grant, but the effort spent removing them is small compared to the effort involved in rebuilding a machine.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: hopejr
HAL = Hardware Abstraction Layer IIRC

Correct. And it must match or be compatible between different computers for the hard drives in use in them to be interchangeable - and the hard disk controller driver for the computer you're trying to boot must be set to start in the hard drive's registry.

It's fairly simple once you're familiar with HALs and hard disk controller drivers.

 

[mikecel79]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: HTRednek
The only other alternative (and I strongly don't recomend it) is to delete each entry in the device manager before you shut down the old system, transfer the drive and boot the new system. Windows will rebuild the device manager and try to load drivers for everything it finds. You will still have to load drivers for all the hardware windows can't identify. Even if you manage to do this it still leaves registry and other issues. My experience is this only works about 50% of the time with the other 50% left with unusable or very unstable systems. It will also usually trigger XP activation again. BY the time you goto all that trouble you could install everything fresh with much less hassle.

That's not correct.

Windows XP can PnP anything except the driver you use to boot the machine (the hard disk driver) and the HAL. If the HAL changes, as I suspect happened here, you're out of luck - no ifs, ands, or buts, with Sysprep or by deleting Device Manager entries. You can try a repair install, of course.

If the hard disk driver changes, and you still have the old machine, and the disk is still bootable in the old machine, there are all kinds of things you can do to fix the issue - stick in a PCI IDE card to use to boot on both boxes temporarily or whatnot.

Keeping old drivers around isn't an issue at all - it's not really a big deal. Keeping lots of old or useless programs around that keep running can be annoying, I'll grant, but the effort spent removing them is small compared to the effort involved in rebuilding a machine.

:thumbsup: He's got it right. His post above correcting the poster that said Sysprep can't move between different chipsets is 100% right too.

I used Sysprep to build an image that is used on everything from a PII to a new Xeon machine and everything in between. All have very different chipsets and hardware. Syspreps works without a problem.

The thing is that Sysprep is really out of the league for most users, even most PC "enthusiasts". You need a good understanding of how Windows enumerates hardware, the inner workings of inf files, and WMI. The XP version of Sysprep makes it easier than 2k but it's still not user friendly for most people.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: mikecel79

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: HTRednek
The only other alternative (and I strongly don't recomend it) is to delete each entry in the device manager before you shut down the old system, transfer the drive and boot the new system. Windows will rebuild the device manager and try to load drivers for everything it finds. You will still have to load drivers for all the hardware windows can't identify. Even if you manage to do this it still leaves registry and other issues. My experience is this only works about 50% of the time with the other 50% left with unusable or very unstable systems. It will also usually trigger XP activation again. BY the time you goto all that trouble you could install everything fresh with much less hassle.

That's not correct.

Windows XP can PnP anything except the driver you use to boot the machine (the hard disk driver) and the HAL. If the HAL changes, as I suspect happened here, you're out of luck - no ifs, ands, or buts, with Sysprep or by deleting Device Manager entries. You can try a repair install, of course.

If the hard disk driver changes, and you still have the old machine, and the disk is still bootable in the old machine, there are all kinds of things you can do to fix the issue - stick in a PCI IDE card to use to boot on both boxes temporarily or whatnot.

Keeping old drivers around isn't an issue at all - it's not really a big deal. Keeping lots of old or useless programs around that keep running can be annoying, I'll grant, but the effort spent removing them is small compared to the effort involved in rebuilding a machine.

thumbsup; He's got it right. His post above correcting the poster that said Sysprep can't move between different chipsets is 100% right too.

You can easily move between chipsets with Sysprep. You'd need to read the Sysprep docs, and (depending on what you're doing, you may need to) either (a) before sysprepping, change to a Standard PCI IDE Controller driver for your IDE controller or (b) run a sysprep -bmsd to build a device list for your sysprep configuration file.

I used Sysprep to build an image that is used on everything from a PII to a new Xeon machine and everything in between. All have very different chipsets and hardware. Syspreps works without a problem.

The thing is that Sysprep is really out of the league for most users, even most PC "enthusiasts". You need a good understanding of how Windows enumerates hardware, the inner workings of inf files, and WMI. The XP version of Sysprep makes it easier than 2k but it's still not user friendly for most people.

I think those who are technical enough to find this board and interested enough to post are good candidates to read and understand the Sysprep documentation. It's really rather good.

Why do you say you need to know anything about WMI for Sysprep?

 

[JEDI]

sysprep -bmsd

what does that do?

 

[mikecel79]

Why do you say you need to know anything about WMI for Sysprep?

I guess you don't need to know WMI for Sysprep but it helps. I do some WMI queries in the last step of the mini-install on a prepped image to install certain software.

Basically it queries WMI for the Computer Manufacturer and if it's listed installs certain management utilities like the Dell Open Manage stuff. I do it this so that if I put the image on a HP machine it won't install the Dell Open Manage client.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: JEDI
sysprep -bmsd

what does that do?

Build mass storage devices (list).... builds a list of all HDD controllers XP supports, and adds that to the first Sysprep bootup so XP can then PnP the HDD controller, no matter what you have, as long as it's supported by XP at all. You can manually add to this list so that even controllers XP doesn't natively support can be used to boot a Sysprep'ed box.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: mikecel79

Why do you say you need to know anything about WMI for Sysprep?

I guess you don't need to know WMI for Sysprep but it helps. I do some WMI queries in the last step of the mini-install on a prepped image to install certain software.

Basically it queries WMI for the Computer Manufacturer and if it's listed installs certain management utilities like the Dell Open Manage stuff. I do it this so that if I put the image on a HP machine it won't install the Dell Open Manage client.

Devcon can do similar things - essentially the issue is how to install device specific hardware w/software drivers that don't PnP normally. WMI is good for that too. That's not really a Sysprep issue alone tho.

 

[JEDI]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: JEDI
sysprep -bmsd

what does that do?

Build mass storage devices (list).... builds a list of all HDD controllers XP supports, and adds that to the first Sysprep bootup so XP can then PnP the HDD controller, no matter what you have, as long as it's supported by XP at all. You can manually add to this list so that even controllers XP doesn't natively support can be used to boot a Sysprep'ed box.

so i dont need to switch the hard drive controller to generic IDE before I make my image?

i'm also asuming i need to set my video driver to the generic Super VGA driver?

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: JEDI

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: JEDI
sysprep -bmsd

what does that do?

Build mass storage devices (list).... builds a list of all HDD controllers XP supports, and adds that to the first Sysprep bootup so XP can then PnP the HDD controller, no matter what you have, as long as it's supported by XP at all. You can manually add to this list so that even controllers XP doesn't natively support can be used to boot a Sysprep'ed box.

so i dont need to switch the hard drive controller to generic IDE before I make my image?

i'm also asuming i need to set my video driver to the generic Super VGA driver?

HDDC -> Generic: No, not if you use the BMSD switch prior to using Sysprep to image your PC - as long as Windows has drivers for your IDE controller (or it's bootable with a standard IDE controller driver - in short, did it work with just the drivers on the XP CD when you installed the motherboard?), or were you required to hit F6 when installing XP?

Video Driver -> No. Everything but the HAL can be PnP'd once the OS is booted. You need the HDDC driver in the image so you can boot the box, but after that, it's all automatic.

Microsoft has good documentation over at support.microsoft.com on this process - it's worth spending a few minutes to search for "sysprep xp bmsd" to see what it all is and how it works.

That said, why are you bothering? You don't need Sysprep - you'll need to rebuild if you have two machines with a different HAL. Sysprep won't help you a bit for that. And if you *did* have 2 machines with the same HAL, just set the originating machine to PCI Standard IDE Disk Controller before you shut it down to Ghost it, and then it will boot on the new motherboard just fine (assuming it doesn't need F6 drivers during XP installation...) --- either way, you don't need Sysprep.

Why don't you explain exactly what you want to do?

 

[JEDI]

I have an Intel p3 WinXP image using ghost 2002. I just got a AMD Sempron system.

I don't want to reload everything over again and was hoping Sysprep was the magic cure. 🙂

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: JEDI
I have an Intel p3 WinXP image using ghost 2002. I just got a AMD Sempron system.

I don't want to reload everything over again and was hoping Sysprep was the magic cure. 🙂

Well, when you build both, and go to Device Manager / Computer, what does it show under COMPUTER for both? That will tell you if the HALs match. If that matches, you're fine, we can get you going. If not, you can rebuild.

 

[JEDI]

i made a ghost image of my p3 machine, then tried sysprep /-bmsd. it populated the sysprep.inf file.

i moved the hard drive to my amd sempron system. it didnt even get to the Windows screen. The computer would automatically reboot when i tried to load agp440.sys 🙁

what is that file? and anyway around it?

EDIT:
ahh.. agp440.sys is for video.

my p3 has a geforce4 4200.
my amd sempron has a pci video card-> ati radeon 32 pci

will try switching video cards

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: JEDI
i made a ghost image of my p3 machine, then tried sysprep /-bmsd. it populated the sysprep.inf file.

i moved the hard drive to my amd sempron system. it didnt even get to the Windows screen. The computer would automatically reboot when i tried to load agp440.sys 🙁

what is that file? and anyway around it?

EDIT:
ahh.. agp440.sys is for video.

my p3 has a geforce4 4200.
my amd sempron has a pci video card-> ati radeon 32 pci

will try switching video cards

Most likely your HAL is different. Why not quickly install XP on the Sempron and look at what HAL it's using? 🙂 That would give you a fast and definite answer to all of this, with no guessing involved.