Ghosting two HP notebooks

I just got my DV7T and my HDX 16T, I am installing Vista Ultimate 64bit onto both, removing the HP bloatware. My question is this, if I take one of them, say the HDX and install everything I need, drivers included, then before entering my product key, use Acronis to backup the entire drive, could this then be restored to the DV7T and maybe just update a few drivers. I would then enter the respective Retail Vista keys. Are they similiar enough that this would work? I know the video cards are not the same but they are in the 9000 series of cards. The Wireless is the same, the CPU is the same but I am not sure about the mobo.

 

You clone the drive straight after the clean install. This will let you install the right drivers for each notebook.

Do NOT activate any of the copies yet. You will be given a choice to change the product key before activating. Obviously you will need to change one of them.

 

That is what I thought...but can I install things like Office, PowerDVD or Nero or anything else that doesn't require the license prior to install. This will save me from doing things twice.

 

Install everything except the activation keys and the drivers.

Clone it, then activate and install the drivers on the individual laptops.

 

I very much doubt that will work. The hardware is significantly different and hardware detection on the first will still put you in a state that will not work on the second.

There is an actual process for pulling this off called in which you run sysprep to remove machine specific settings and then allow hardware detection to run again on the new machine, but it is a little more difficult in Vista than it was in XP.

Here's a quick walkthrough.

http://www.svrops.com/svrops/articles/sysprepvista.htm#runsysprep

 

Zenica, you need to have legitimate licenses for these programs. You cannot just clone them and think its counted as a single install.

Doesnt matter till its activated. Most you have to do is just re-activate anyway

Windows generates a unique 40(?) digit key ID from the hardware you have installed. This unique key is used to keep track of the system being used with the license when you activate with microsoft.

This is how Windows sees the hardware changes and mismatches.

Its a retail licenses he has, so theres no specific hardware ID its locked onto like OEM licenses.

OEM licenses, which are specific to the system its initially installed on, wont activate if its installed on a different system. It will detect the mismatch.

 

Flip, I respectfully disagree. The GUID you refer to is just one of the things that occurs during setup. Sysprep does remove the GUID, but it also removes the hardware that was initialized during the previous setup.

(also, he is installing Ultimate--Ultimate has the capability to connect to a domain. I don't know what the end user is planning but if he is going to say, a university and will be connecting to the domain there, having two machines with the same GUID will prevent the machine from properly connecting to a domain).


That said, unless the hardware between these two disparate models is very very close (and it isn't) it will be like a drunk waking up in the wrong house after a binge drink episode.

Vista and XP before it will not run hardware initialization again just because the OS finds itself in a new computer like Windows 98 did.

The OP's thought might work on two identical machines but it will not work with two disparate machines like these I am guessing.

 

My Vista is retail, one I had and one I got from an NBR member.

I also have two seperate Office 2007 SBE licenses.

I have Nero 8 OEM x2 that came bundled with other hardware.

I am not looking to side step any licenses, just same time from having
to do the same thing---twice. It takes about 6 hours to fully install and set things up the way I like, change the Temp folder locations, set the virtual memory to my specification, add and remove desktop icons...the list goes on and on.

Like HP says, the PC is personal again.

I don't know if they are all that dissimiliar. Hardware specifications are very close, aside from say Intel Wireless 5100 vx 5300 or nVidia 9200 vs 9600.
I am looking into your suggestion with Sysrep.

Either way, I'll let you know what happens...

 

He has two licenses. You can change the product key before activating. So it doesn't matter.

A change of HD is enough to trigger a license re-activation. This sometimes happens to people who upgrade their HD's and move the image from the old one.

I suggest you read this http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/10/26/Microsoft_clarifies_Vista_activation_to_bit-tech/

 

Flip,

I don't need to read that. We are talking about two different things.

You misunderstand my point. I am not concerned about activation as in licensing, I am talking about hardware initialization and the GUID.

The GUID and the product key are not the same thing. When you install windows, the setup routine generates a unique random ID, the GUID, for a machine. This enables a computer to be recognized and catalogued in active directory.

I got called into an auto plant once because their IT department didn't sysprep their images and they couldn't join any computer to active directory and no one could figure out why. These were 500 identical Dell machines.

They connected the first machine, connected to the AD domain and no other machine would attach. Why? Because the domain controller thought, "what the heck? You already joined my domain! See, I have your GUID right here!"

So, we reimaged, sysprepped and reinstalled all 500 machines and boom, no problems. Sysprep does a couple of things--it removes the unique id number created during an installation and also resets the hardware footprint to nothing (for example, creates a default hklm registry hive). Then, when you image the other drives and start the machines, a mini setup begins which reinitializes all hardware.

In this case, the grphics chip is different as is the CPU and quite possibly the chipsets are different. Go ahead, take your harddrive out of your computer and put it in another dissimilar machine and start it up--the end result is that you will kibosh your OS (it will not even start up in your current PC now).

Let me ask you. Have you ever actually done what you are suggesting the OP do? If you did and it worked you were lucky. I have done it and only when the machines were virtually identical did it work.

Now, you actually could do as he wants and then run a repiar installation immediately on the machine and it might work but if he tries to boot it with a clean image I would be stunned if it worked. They machines look to different to me.

It has nothing to do with activation or legal--it is all about hardware. The GUID I addressed first is an interesting side note and in the end might not even matter. Two computers can have the same GUID and work just fine as long as they are not joined to an AD domain. But, since he has Ultimate, it is possible he could join a domain, so that is why I brought it up.

 

You gotta understand that an OEM license is tied down to a GUID, this is how it knows the license isnt meant for that system when you activate

Yes ive done it dozens of times on different systems for diagnostic purposes.

It loads up fine and look for drivers for the new hardware then the activation assistant bugs the hell out of you. Because it detects the hardware changes. The GUID changes to the systems installed parts.

Sometimes i get an NTLoader error, which can easily be repaired.

I run a server 03 AD and never got that sort of error before, probably because when a workstation dies i transplant the HD to another tower. We use an XP image pre-loaded with our programs, it might be sysprepped

 

Well, I used Acronis, imaged the system I setup, then flashed that image to the 2nd system. It freaked out about the video but once i updated it, it is A-OK, so much so that I am using it right now.

I just entered my licenses and activated Vista. I saved a lot of time...

 

Now i suggest you keep an image of the activated version of Vista along with the programs and drivers installed.

Best recovery disc ever.

 

that's what i was going to say.. since it's only 2 machines.. why not set them both up how you want.. and then image them separately? i have my desktop imaged with DiX http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm and it only takes maybe 8-10 minutes to do a complete restore. much faster than HP's

 

Yea, what is up with HP's recovery software times?

I imaged the three older ones I sold off and each one took like 4 hours!

Acronis took 30 minutes, if that.

I just took two new images, now that each has Vista and Office activated.
I burned them to a 30GB HD disc. Nice.

I am just glad the hardware was not so different that the OS would freak out.

 

Again, we are using the same term to mean different things. A guid is not a product ID. An OEM license is tied to a product ID, not a GUID.

Sounds to me like your ghosted image is syspreped already as what you described sounds like the mini-install.

As for Zeneca's two machines, they must be much more alike than I suspected they would be. I am glad it worked, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it working very often for people who come after.

 

Heres what would have happened if you used an OEM license on a system with altered hardware. It will not activate because the hardware key is different from the original.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=317981

 

Is that for me? Because it is irrelevent for our conversation on GUIDs and imaging. I mean it is certainly accurate, it just doesn't have any bearing on what I am trying to explain.

I must not be communicating well

 

I've used GHOST to image multiple Dell computers before connecting to a SBS 2003-based network, and as long as I don't join the domain before cloning, I never have a problem. Set them up as workgroup computers, clone, and distribute through the office. Upon first boot, join the domain. Works everytime. If I need to clone an already-joined PC for whatever reason, I clone, setup, dis-join the domain on the cloned PC, and rejoin. New ID created and everyone is happy.

 

But I am betting they are all very similar PCs, correct?

As for joining the SBS 2003 network...I am not all that familiar with SBS--does it even use AD? Is it technically a comain controller? I thought it was more or less a file server with exchange capabilities.

The issue with cloned PCs an AD is that the unique id for each machine allows the machine to be managed through AD

 

Ye3s, similar PC's but not relevant to the issue, which is unique ID's.

SBS2003 is Server 2003 with Exchange 2003 and other technologies all rolled into it, and AD is automatically installed and fully operational (required by SBS2003).

It was my understanding that the unique ID needed for AD is only created when you join the domain. As long as a WS is part of a workgroup and not a domain, the ID has not been generated yet. That is why when you clone a PC that is already joined to a domain, in order to use it on the same domain, you must dis-join it and rejoin it, thus creating a new ID. It works, trust me.