SATA, ghost image and Windows vista issues

Hi guys!

i have a norton ghost image which has windows xp sp2 installed and i use BartPE to use the norton ghost. Now, the problem is we got new Sony Vaio Z1-12GN laptops which comes with pre-installed Vista Business and has S-ATA HD. I want to downgrade these laptops using the WinxP ghost image which i have but the problem is that if i try to boot the laptop using the BartPE DVD, the laptops just hangs on the Windows XP loading screen(even before entering the bart application).

After googling a bit, i came to know that i have to installed SATA drivers in order to install WinXP but now how do i integrate SATA drivers into that winxp ghost image?

I would really appreciate if someone can help me out in this..

Thanks

 

WHOA!!! Hold on a second. Even if you could get the drivers integrated, an image created on a different brand/model of laptop is NOT going to work on the Z1.

It would be like trying to take the hard drive out of a Dell and putting it into the Sony. The OS would not recognize any of the hardware and the results would be, shall we say, less than optimal.

Back in the days of Windows 98 this would work, you could just go into device manager and delete all the devices. Shut down and then create the image. Move it to a new machine and reboot. Windows 98 would find all of the correct drivers (or prompt you for install media) and voilà. But that, most assuredly, does NOT work on any NT or derivative OS. That would be NT, 2000, XP or Vista.

Your only way to downgrade the Z1 is to install XP from a installation DVD.

Gary

 

I mostly agree with ScuderiaConchiglia. A fresh install is *heavily* preferred.

However, if you want to get fancy, you can complete your image task to the new device and then run a XP install repair to get the OS back up. It's not a physical SATA vs IDE thing, it's the disk controller. Doing a Install repair should address this without borking the OS. It should also somewhat alleviate the driver-jumble. You'd just want to reapply the service pack afterwards.

This being said, it's a big mixed-bag on what the Sony apps will behave.

A fresh install is still your best bet.

I work in IT and we do Physical to Virtual, Virtual to Physical and Physical to Physical moves all the time. You are basically doing a P2P migration. We use VMware converter and PlateSpin Powerconvert if anybody is wondering. Platespin's stuff is absolutely amazing.

 

I do agree with both of you that a fresh install would be my best bet but i have been restoring the same image on different HP pcs and i never had a single problem with them so far.

So, now for a trial and test sake i am thinking of restoring that image on a HP PC (with IDE drive), inserting the Sony Vaio sata HD drivers in windows's drivers folder, re-creating the image of the same and then restoring on Vaio Z1 laptop. Do you think this will work?

Thanks for your help guys

 

Do your image copy and re-run the XP installer. Should get it to at least boot. You can clean up the driver mess after. This method doesn't break your apps either

 

i decided against trying it and went ahead with a complete new winxp installation using the recovery CD which came along with it. everything good so far except that when i connect the laptop to a docking station, it asks for a ethernet driver whereas i have already installed it and it works. But when i remove it from docking it dissapears from the device manager.

Any idea why is it asking for a driver ?

Thanks