[luau] M$ secret code....

[Wayne Bow]

Aloha,
> On Wed, 2002-09-04 at 06:48, W. Wayne Liauh wrote:
> > 
> > Windows p-n-p oftentimes can cause more trouble than good.  One of the 
> > worst pitfalls of Windows' p-n-p is that it has the propensity to treat 
> > you like an idiot, insisting that it is right and you're wrong, refusing 
> > to accept the driver you supplied.
> > 
> 
> Another annoying aspect of windows p-n-p that I have run into is with
> Win2k and WinXP, if you install it on one machine, it is exceedingly
> difficult to transfer that hard drive to another machine, and get to a
> stage where it will re-detect and configure devices again.  Several
> times I was forced to do a repair or reinstall in cases like this, even
> between two motherboards with the same chipset and peripherals.  In my
> experience this caused a blue screen of death every boot up attempt,
> even in Safe Mode.

Try downlaod and run "sysprep.exe" before you transfer the drive. I 
run a lab, that we rolled Win 2000 to over the summer. We made 
one image, sysprepped it and ghosted the sysprepped image. The 
sysprepped Hard drive should roll to a new "similar" machine with no 
problem.  Takes a few minutes to re-enter the OS key and setup the 
network (which, in all fairness, could be resolved with an answer file) 
but works great.

A little extra time was required when we installed the image on a 
machine with an older motherboard by the same manufacturer. Had 
to have the system disk handy but the procedure was solid. I have 
had difficulty making that work when trying to load on a substantially 
different board.

Can't speak (yet) about  XP's abilities but Win2K is setup to do this 
kinda thing
> 
> Within Linux it is fairly straight forward to move a hard drive from one
> computer to another.  Most devices will be auto-detected and configured
> by Kudzu, and the main thing may break is the swap partition which may
> need to be renamed in /etc/fstab.  It has worked this way for me in RH
> and Mandrake at least.
> 
> There however is probably a way of booting Windows that "forgets" about
> all prior devices.  I didn't have enough time to look deeply into the
> documentation at the time.
> 
The sysprep route doesn't actually "forget" about the drivers it just 
doesn't cram them down your throat. Does anyone know of another 
method?

HTH,

Wayne Bow
Network Administrator
St Francis School                   (808) 988.4111 ext 107
"Quality Catholic Education in a Spirit of Joy"