Quick question about restoring XP?

Hey there

I need to restore XP to a different drive from a backup I made recently, basically to save time in installing tons of apps to a clean XP install on another drive...

But the backup was made of an XP instance that is on a drive with Win 7 and is in a dual boot config but it's not the primary OS.

The drive letter of the XP instance I need to restore is F:.

The drive (not partition an actual physical drive) I wish to restore to has an XP instance on it already but when I boot into that instance, it's drive letter is C:, as it's the only OS on the drive and is on the first partition.

Is there anyway of restoring the backup (I'm using Acronis True Image) so that it works or will the registry be all borked because all the reference are to F: instead of C:?

Will I even be able to restore the XP instance I backed up, it was in a dual boot so will the MBR be a problem?

Thanks in advance for any advice on this.

 

I am slightly confused, but let me try and work through it.

First, at present you have a laptop with Win7 and XP. XP is a secondary OS with Win7 prime. If you used the conventional dual boot method, XP was installed first, then Win7 was installed.

If so, Win7 would have rewritten the MBR and wiped out the XP bootloader. XP would rely on Win7 to load it when called.

So, yes, the MBR, boot loader and partition boot record are all problems--not necessarily insurmountable, but problems.

Now, You have XP on a different partition and you want to restore this, but you say that XP is on drive F....Does XP see itself as drive F? Or does Win7 see XP as drive F? I mean, when you load XP, does it think it is on drive F? Usually, if you loaded your dualboot conventionally, XP thinks it is on C: Win7 may see the drive as F, but not XP.

If XP thinks it is on F, you likely did not load this dual boot conventionally. Even in you load XP onto another drive and get around the not insurmountable bootloader, MBR and partition boot record, getting around the drive F is going to be a serious headache. It may be able to be done, but itmight prove to be more work than it is worth.

But finally, you have another issue, I think. You want to install this XP install on another drive....where? On the same computer? If so, why? It is already there. Are you planning to move it to a different computer? If so, THAT is a problem.

You cannot move a windows installation from PC to another because each installation is specifically installed to a group of hardware. You can sometimes drop a drive into an identical computer, or drop it into a computer of near identical hardware and repair it, but given the other obstacles, I think you are asking the impossible.

 

It's for the same computer, my Asus laptop.

I'll try to clarify a bit.

I have the internal drive of my laptop with Win 7 and XP, it came pre-installed with Vista and I then installed XP, and then upgraded Vista to Win 7 by way of the in-place upgrade method, so Win 7 (and Vista before it) is the primary OS.

This is the drive I made the XP backup from and it's drive letter when in XP is F.

I have a second drive (a WD 120GB USB drive) which I have installed XP to and it runs fine, no speed issues or anything. The idea in this is I can plug it in anytime I wish to use XP, because at the moment that isn't that often, and the original XP install is taking up HDD space on the internal drive of my laptop and I wish to remove that, but still have XP lying around ready for occasional use.

This USB HDD is the drive I wish to restore the XP backup to and when in XP it's drive letter is C.

 

Hmmm, neat.

How'd you set up XP on the Vista/Win7 machine (What method, since that is not the conventional way to do it). It might make a difference.

How big is the drive in the Asus laptop?

 

Vista was already on the drive. So I installed XP on a new partition, basically using a guide I found via google. Basically you install XP then use the Vista (or Win 7) DVD to repair the startup and get into Vista (or Win 7) and then use EasyBCDEdit to create the boot menu with Vista/Win 7 and XP on it.

The Asus laptop HDD is 320gb, I'm running out of space, I only have 67gb free...

 

Hmmm.

Here's the thing--while you might eventually get this to work, it is going to be a bear. You know what I might try? I'd drop a 320gb drive in your enclosure and clone your entire drive to it. That way you would maintain the Win7/XP mess.

If that works, I'd then take the 120 gb drive and mirror the partition structure on it--just make the unused partitions very small, then clone the xp partition to corresponding partition on the 120gb drive and work it out.

That way, you won't have to mess with the whole XP drive F thing...it will still think it is on drive F, even though C, D and E are only a couple of mb in size. You will still need to create a valid XP MBR, boot partition and boot loader with an XP CD, but I think it could work.


Them kill the XP partition on your laptop drive and expand Win7 into it.