Help with W2K move

I imaged a W2K drive onto a new P4 2.8 system and can’t get passed an inaccessible_boot_drive error on startup. BIOS virus check is disabled, chkdsk shows no probs, and shows everything in place. Anyone know a quick fix?

there’s tons of important data on drive that can’t be lost…

Well yeah, that won’t work! You can’t copy the contents of an iBook HDD and paste it on a P4 system, right? The machine that was running Win2k has different hardware and stuff doesn’t it? That means all the drivers and such you’re trying to force onto the new machine are not going to work and the OS isn’t going to recognize the computer it’s been placed on. Shit won’t work like that.

If you want your files back… Just install Windows 2000 on the new computer and install a second hardrive for the backup image. Then you can copy and paste your files to the proper installation.

If you don’t wanna do that, you can put the clone back on the original mahcine and burn your ‘important data’ to CD or DVD, OR transfer it over a network to the new machine…

We do this all the time when we image Windows 2000/XP systems.

You have to load the generic IDE drivers (copy them if necessary), and then insert a registry key pointing at them. Then you shut down, make the image. When you boot next time, it will boot fine, but with the generic IDE drivers, and then detect the new hardware.

I’m not at the office right now, but I have it down to a simple drag-n-drop procedure now. It’s 4 files, copy them, click the registry key, shutdown, ghost.

You’ll need to show me that sometime. I could never figure out the driver/registry thing.

it will usually let you boot into safe mode and fix the drivers. It wouldn’t do that even. I just did the 2nd repair (pick install win2000 instead of repair, then pick repair). now it boots…
its the one that gets forgotten about (DOH! he says) that re-installs over existing installation…
i dont even know a pc program that can read Mac’s FS…

[quote=“herbie_popnecker”]I imaged a W2K drive onto a new P4 2.8 system and can’t get passed an inaccessible_boot_drive error on startup. BIOS virus check is disabled, chkdsk shows no probs, and shows everything in place. Anyone know a quick fix?

there’s tons of important data on drive that can’t be lost…[/quote]

tinyurl.com/yqnte

thanks, that’s exactly the proceedure i used. I just forgot in a mad rush that there is that ‘yet one more’ repair option after the first list.
I have a lot of people that have been told that XP is ‘no good’ and it just gets ‘slower and slower’ the more you run it, and want w2000 on their new machines. Never noticed on my machines that run XP…

MiG’s solution is interesting… I’m using Drive Copy3 [don’t all gasp at once, we’re just learning how not to be a shoestring operation] then rebooting and running the Repair function to redo those generic drivers… if you could just copy & repoint thru repair console, it would be fast.

So tell me what I should get, Ghost or Drive Image. Does either ‘clone’ the old drive to the new one and retain the old one?
And what’s your take on this XP Pro vs Win2K thing? The only problems I’ve never seen any real problems with LEGIT installs of it, but then again I never had any problems with Windows Me either…

We’ve also used sysprep quite a bit:

microsoft.com/windows2000/do … efault.asp

Our situation is a bit different, though. We’re not making one copy of a computer, we’re usually making 100 copies. And there may be 8 or 9 different types of computers, but we want them all to look the same. So we use sysprep or do the generic IDE thing, then shutdown. Then we make a ghost image onto the network. THen on each computer, we connect to the network with a boot floppy and copy down the image.

And yeah, ghost works great for us, yes, it makes a copy, doesn’t erase the original.

We’re using windows 2000 almost exclusively. XP is fine on single workstations (not student ones), when you can set it to auto-update.

My big issue with computers that aren’t locked down (with DeepFreeze), is that within a week or two, they just get filled with spyware and other assorted junk.

Speaking of all this imaging software… what is a good software for osx 10.3 to image a new install the burn it for later on use… ? id like to make one for my ibook… And send it to katie… for her’s…

You know you can just make an image with disk utility, right?

I didn’t know that because i thought that you could not make one when the os was active. I don’t have another mac either. I want to make one that i just pop in the cd and do what is needed to recover the laptop for her… THINK REALLY SIMPLE heh…

You can’t make an image on a PC when the OS is active either :wink:

Just boot with the panther CD. Or make a bootable CD.

How do i do that. Got any hints…

Hold the C key to boot from CD.

I mean how do i make a bootable cd… not boot off the cd. i know that part…

tinyurl.com/2sgz3

Thanks for the help. Unfortunately I couldn’t download sysprep tools because of the outage, so I had to do another using the Repair function. Slow but it works.
Unfortunately the 2nd system needed to be fixed from administrator mode and no one knew the password. Win2000 won’t crack with the program i use (linux boot that reads NTFS and lets you reset passwds and write to the hive) like XP will. You also can’t boot to safe mode command prompt and net user administrator /random.
Luckily I remembered and old user on the system, guessed the password and thankyougod they had admin rights.
So does anyone else know a few tricks, the lost admin password is the most common thing you run into…