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Can't Restore Windows 7's Image Backups to a Different PC?
Hello.
According to https://www.howtogeek.com/239312/how...ws-7-8-and-10/, it says you can't restore a back up to another PC. Is that true? Thank you for reading and I hope to get answers soon. -- Quote of the Week: "When the water rises the fish eat the ants, when the water falls the ants eat the fish." --Thai Proverb Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly. /\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org / / /\ /\ \ http://antfarm.ma.cx. Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail. | |o o| | \ _ / ( ) |
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#2
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Can't Restore Windows 7's Image Backups to a Different PC?
"Ant" wrote | According to | https://www.howtogeek.com/239312/how...ws-7-8-and-10/, | it says you can't restore a back up to another PC. Is that true? | It's complicated. First is the license. If you have an OEM computer the system is tied to that. It won't activate if you move it. If you bought a full version it can be moved as often as you like, as long as it's only on one machine at a time. The other issue is the hardware. I've never tried moving Win7 to a different machine but XP handles it just fine as long as the IDE drivers are uninstalled first. It's easier if you remove as many drivers as possible, then shut down and image it. I've even adapted an XP install from a single-core CPU to multi. It requires swapping out hal.dll, which is a rather esoteric task, but doable. I would guess that 7 handles it easier than XP. Another thing you need to consider is boot partitions. Win7 has a messy system for boot. If you want to move it, it'd b e easier to put it all on on partition before imaging. I do that in general with all Win7, before doing any disk image backup. It's too confusing keeping track of multiple partitions dependent on each other. And consolidating them is not difficult. Relaed to that is editing the boot config. That's another area that's an easy text edit on XP and a big production on 7. I use BootIt, which includes instructions and an editor for Win7 boot. Those are just a general outline of things you'll need to know about. But the only real showstopper is OEM licensing. I've heard you can cheat the system somehow. I don't know about that. I know that under normal circumstances an OEM license -- on a store-bought machine or from an OEM disk that you bought for about $100 -- is tied to the first system it's installed to. On a homemade machine that means you can only move it to a similar machine, with the same motherboard. On an OEM machine the activation is on the motherboard, put there by the OEM company. Either way, copying a disk image to a different computer is probably not going to activate. |
#3
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Can't Restore Windows 7's Image Backups to a Different PC?
Ant wrote:
Hello. According to https://www.howtogeek.com/239312/how...ws-7-8-and-10/, it says you can't restore a back up to another PC. Is that true? Thank you for reading and I hope to get answers soon. There's two levels of concern. 1) Flat out fails to restore. The program tells you in no uncertain terms, it will not listen to your request. 2) After restoration, system has trouble booting because the drivers needed on the *different* hardware are *different*. The (2) case is more likely than the (1) case. You still have files in the (2) case. The files are restored. A Windows "repair install" could be used, but you can only do those from a running OS. If the OS won't run, you can't repair install it (at least, I've not heard of a way to do that). And as the article explains to you, the container format is VHD, and modern Windows OSes can "mount" a VHD as if it was a file system. If you have NTFS inside a VHD, then you'll see a nice drive letter, with the properties saying it is NTFS. You can shovel out your files. The only OS which is a PITA is WinXP, and for that one, there is VHDMount or OSMounter perhaps (if you wanted to use WinXP to look inside a Win7-made VHD file). I can access those right now, as I'm typing this. Not a problem. However, my different machines take different drivers, and I wouldn't expect the image from the old machine, to boot the new machine. My experience with this, is when you move an OS, the worst-case is the OS "freezes" and just stops on you. In some cases, you get 3 days grace to fix the license. In other cases, you get 30 days grace (like it was a new install). Windows 10 is relatively forgiving, and it's unclear how long it will run without rebooting or something (could go past the 30 days grace, and run for hours at a time without tipping over). The Windows 7 backup has two options: 1) "System Image" = works at partition level, insist on backing up C: no matter what. But you can include additional partitions in the backup if you want. Output is a VHD file, per partition. wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:E: -include:C:,D:,F: -allCritical -quiet 2) "File by file" = used to back up a home directory. Output is 200MB ZIP files which are not chained together. The (1) method is how you would be attempting to back up C: . Some commercial backup softwares, have a re-targeting capability where they inject the drivers to make restoral of a boot image work on different hardware. The Windows tool is just a basic one, without such frills. A number of competitive products can do this. Not just this one. http://reflect.macrium.com/help/v5/h...w_hardware.htm You can redeploy an OS your own self, using "sysprep", but my experiments with that were far from satisfactory. It was for me, a useless exercise (the OS practically had to be "gutted" for the operation to finish, and it starts up in OOBE state). Just a waste of time. There wouldn't be a WinAmp waiting for me when it starts for the first time. The Win10 OS was practically empty of Program Files. There's probably some way to fix that, but I was having trouble with the recipes I was using. This is what IT guys do all day long, so you'd have to ask one of them how to do it right. HTH, Paul |
#4
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Can't Restore Windows 7's Image Backups to a Different PC?
Ant wrote:
Hello. According to https://www.howtogeek.com/239312/how...ws-7-8-and-10/, it says you can't restore a back up to another PC. Is that true? Thank you for reading and I hope to get answers soon. As others have pointed out, and with their detailed explanations - not likely. That said, I can think of one possible exception (and one I'd risk trying), and that would be to a nearly identical computer, if you have that. So I think this could come in handy IF you have a backup computer that is of the same type, with (ideally) the same hardware (although that may not be strictly necessary). The main bugaboo being the windows licensing, but if they are the same OEM and almost identical machines, I think it would work. I also think your degree of success might also, in some part, depend on the program you're using, too. Acronis True Image (for example) might be more forgiving or accepting of some differences than some other imaging programs. |
#5
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Can't Restore Windows 7's Image Backups to a Different PC?
In message , Paul
writes: Ant wrote: Hello. According to https://www.howtogeek.com/239312/how...age-backups-on -windows-7-8-and-10/, it says you can't restore a back up to another PC. Is that true? Thank you for reading and I hope to get answers soon. There's two levels of concern. 1) Flat out fails to restore. The program tells you in no uncertain terms, it will not listen to your request. (Which program is telling you this?) [big snip - all useful stuff, marked here to keep. And Mayayayana's post too.] Some commercial backup softwares, have a re-targeting capability where they inject the drivers to make restoral of a boot image work on different hardware. The Windows tool is just a basic one, without such frills. A number of competitive products can do this. Not just this one. http://reflect.macrium.com/help/v5/h...y_a_system_to_ new_hardware.htm (Interesting that there's still stuff there in a "v5" directory!) I note the first line in that says "Applies to: Professional and Server Editions of Macrium Reflect only." (I note it also doesn't even _mention_ the licencing/activation question.) [] This is what IT guys do all day long, so you'd have to ask one of them how to do it right. HTH, Paul ID (in theory). John Ever been frustrated that you can't *disagree* with a petition? If so, visit 255soft.uk - and please pass it on, too. (IK only( -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Radio 4 is one of the reasons being British is good. It's not a subset of Britain - it's almost as if Britain is a subset of Radio 4. - Stephen Fry, in Radio Times, 7-13 June, 2003. |
#6
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Can't Restore Windows 7's Image Backups to a Different PC?
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul writes: Ant wrote: Hello. According to https://www.howtogeek.com/239312/how...age-backups-on -windows-7-8-and-10/, it says you can't restore a back up to another PC. Is that true? Thank you for reading and I hope to get answers soon. There's two levels of concern. 1) Flat out fails to restore. The program tells you in no uncertain terms, it will not listen to your request. (Which program is telling you this?) [big snip - all useful stuff, marked here to keep. And Mayayayana's post too.] Well, as an example, a Macrium 5 emergency boot CD would not restore a Macrium 6 MRIMG backup. That's not what the HowToGeek article is about. I only made my levels of concern model, to show possible outcomes. Booting and licensing issues might be considered "a problem for a redeploy scenario". Even if your trim level of Macrium didn't support Redeploy, it could still say something like "you know, this here image I'm restoring, won't boot on this machine". But that doesn't take all the possible outcomes into account, such as the user moving the drive to the correct computer chassis when the restore is completed. For example, I sometimes do restores on my Typing Computer, then move the drive to the Test Computer. Such a status message if delivered, wouldn't do me a lot of good. There aren't a lot of reasons for a (1) situation to arise. Macrium versioning is an orthogonal issue that looks like a (1). Just to demonstrate you can be stopped by some trivial details. Paul |
#7
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Can't Restore Windows 7's Image Backups to a Different PC?
Ant wrote:
Hello. According to https://www.howtogeek.com/239312/how...ws-7-8-and-10/, it says you can't restore a back up to another PC. Is that true? Thank you for reading and I hope to get answers soon. Here's another recommendation, assuming your two PCs are very similar to each other (so that there's a fair chance it might actually work!): Make an image backup of your system drive partition (C on each PC first, so that if you try to restore the backup to another PC and it fails, you can restore the previously saved image backup. I think that way you'll have your bets covered, and you can see for yourself. Of course, this is assuming you have a bootable restore CD that works and a good image program, AND have made system image backups prior to this. If the PCs are slightly different, you may have your hands full trying to find the right drivers, which can be a bit of a PIA. And you'll know soon enough if the OS licensing is an issue. At any rate, I wonder what you decided, and even if the two PCs were comparable, or vastly different. |
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