Windows Forum

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Moving Windows 2000 from 1 PC to Another

0 helpful
11 replies

by techman 1 view

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
I just built a new pc that is meant for my boss. His current Pc already has windows 2000 on it and in the past I've had great luck ( with win 9x ) in just copying over all the data minus the swap file and it redetecting everything. However I have yet to have figured out how to do the same with win 2k. Is there a simple way to do this in 2000 or will I just have to resetup everything on the new pc everytime I try to boot the old hdd in the new pc it get stop errors with an inaccessible boot device. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

11 replies

by yosho

Well, you can try just swapping the drives in the PCs.. I personally havent tried it with 2000, but have done it with 98 and 95. Yes, I know there's a huge difference between 9x and 2000, but it's worth a shot.. But my word of advice, nothing beats a fresh install of an OS...

by sszego

Ghost is the answer.
creat network bootdisks and a ghost disk
boot on the network with the disks to get an ip, or set an ip on the boot disks.
run ghost from both machines
host:netbios master
client netbios slave
connect, image to destination.
when done reboot client and MAGIC

by idtent

If I understand what you are doing right, then you might want to run sys prep on the drive in the old machine and then throw it in the new one and it will find everything new again and even do the check disk and reboot for ya. sys prep will blow away all the old drivers so it will be as though you just ghosted down a fresh image. If you want boot off the new one with the old HDD as a slave and copy over c\:documents and settings\ or what ever your configuration is calling the place where all the profiles are stored - and if that bombs out you still have the old drive unscathed. Good luck.

by tweakyterrase

Because I am a poor b...... I would get the hard drive out of the new box you built for him and plub it into your bosses box. Boot to dos and commense copying all of the files over to the new hard drive and I mean everything. Then go a head and boot the new machine with the transfered data. Let all of the errors happen as they will. Once you machine subbonly starts up, go into the device manager and delete, yes I said delete, all of the components that are not pressent, conflicting, or whatever. By the time you are done with the device manager, there should be nothing that stands out from anything else. Now, reboot and get ready to reload the drivers for the componenets you installed into you box. Windows, for once in its life, should take card of all the rest. Granted, you might be left with a few minor tech problems, but nothing that anyone hasn't been able to finish before.

Happy Day now

by techman

I've laready tried that.. it get a stop error message while booting.. it seems that 2000 is much more honery than 9x..

by thi_ca

Moving Windows 2000 from PC to another is not an easy task since each PC has different Hardware Compatibility list itself. GHOST program can tranfer all the files from one HDrive to another in case you want to use a larger HDrive. I would recomendyou install OS and drivers from the scratch. Surely, you will save a lot of time.

Even saving more time, you should prepare all most updated drivers from internet before start installation. Good luck.

This discussion is closed to new replies.