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Restoring a True Image to a replacement laptop

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My current laptop is old and will soon be becoming unreliable and will fail.
It has a (little used) Windows XP and a (regularly used) Linux Ubuntu dual boot system on it and I keep regular true image backups on an external hard drive using Acronis True Image 11 Home.
When I need to buy a new laptop (operating system free) I would like to restore my latest backed up true image of my old laptop's internal hard drive to the new laptop.
Will I then have bootable and functional systems on my new laptop like I currently have on my old laptop?

Is this a reliable way of moving my operating sytems and data to a new laptop or does the team recommend another suitable method?

I understand that Microsoft have put barriers in the way of moving XP from one PC to another PC but my old laptop did not come with an XP installation CD and I certainly don't want to reinstall my unique Windows applications.
Are there any such barriers with Linux Ubuntu?

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Mike,

What you describe is an OEM copy of XP, which is not transferrable to another computer, so it will most likely not allow you to boot. The drivers, etc. that are platform specific will also not match from one laptop to another, so your plan is not likely to succeed. Acronis makes a version that supposedly can overcome the driver issue, for a premium. But that still leaves you with the non-portable version of XP to deal with.

With Ubuntu you may encounter the same driver issues, but it's at least worth a try. However, there's a caveat with Acronis you have to be prepared for. When I tried to restore a Ubuntu partition with Acronis it zeroed out the PBR, so my bootmanager could no longer detect it. Found out about this problem from this forum after the fact, but I had another image from another tool that restored Ubuntu successfully, so I never looked at the partition after the Acronis restore issue to see exactly what it had zeroed out.

Doug,

Thanks for your reply that got me thinking as follows:
1. Windows
I had anticipated that it would not be technically possible to clone a Windows operating system from one PC to another non identical PC because of driver differences at the very least.
Of course MS would not want a (paid for) copy of its of its operating system, be it XP, Vista or 7, to be cloned from one PC to another PC by end users.
(I believe that MS has enabled PC manufacturers to clone Windows.)
So as I'm mainly an Ubuntu user now, the MS restriction will accelerate my current plan of dispensing with my real XP system completely.
The very few applications I run there and the associated data I'll install in my guest XP system running under VirtuaBox, Ubuntu being the host.
2. Ubuntu
I've found that the version of Acronis I run, True Image 11 Home, has been reliable in restoring from a backup and has "saved my bacon" after various experiments have gone wrong.
Nevertheless, as I must not lose my essential private data held in my Ubuntu /home/mike folder and the few essential files held in my XP /Documents and Settings/Mike folder, will the following plan ensure that I don't lose any vital stuff should my old essential laptop become toast?
1. Keep regular backup copies of my Ubuntu /home/mike and XP /Documents and Settings/Mike folders on an external hard drive.
2. Buy a new laptop and Install Ubuntu, VirtualBox and XP guest on it.
3. Run a live Ubuntu system and copy/replace the latest backup copy of my Ubuntu /home/mike folder and the XP /Documents and Settings/Mike folder.
I'll test the above on my desktop PC vintage 1998 that is here for house guests to use.

Mike

If you are able to find an OEM CD of XP with SP3, then all is not lost if you transfer it to a new drive and laptop.

However there are no guarantees that everything will work 100%.

On first boot you will almost certainly get a BSOD on the new laptop. To remedy this you can perform a repair install with the XP CD. This wipes out most of the HAL information in registry, and then installs a basic first install version, this should allow you to be able to boot the system. XP will then go through a normal install process of requiring a product key. Your original laptop key may or may not work, but if it does, it will require activation. None of your programs will be touched by this action.

If you want your Ubuntu partition carried over, you'll need to make a sector by sector image of the drive which will require the same amount of storage space as your current drive.

The pitfalls:

1. Your Acronis rescue CD may not work depending on the hardware that your new laptop uses - you may have to download the ISO or SAFE version from your Acronis account. However as TI11 is somewhat old, even that might not work with your new hardware, you cna only try it and see - there may be ways around this problem.

2. Some of your programs might be 'narked' with the new hardware and cause either BSOD's or system hanging. The main culprits are likely to be video and network drivers .

3. Some programs may still be grumpy.

4. Programs that have node locked licences will not work.

5. As the drive is different as is some of the hardware, you might have problems accessing some of your files as Windows will have the wrong security identifiers set - this can be solved quite easily.

Thanks Colin B,

No surprises that it is not simple to achieve what I will want to do.

MS has to protect its investment in its operating systems somehow.

I plan to test out what I've written in my reply to Doug first that test out what you've written. "I ... may be some time"

Usually if you get the same brand of laptop (or PC) you can re-use an OS. For example, any Dell Windows XP CD will work on any Dell laptop (or PC) without restriction. It is licensed to the manufacturer not the user. I maintain a large number of Dell PCs of varying ages and models. Each came with its own OS CD, but for convenience when I do reinstalls I have a single CD I use every time. It isn;t a special CD, it's just one that came with one of the PCs. I've done the same thing with Gateways and an OEM Gateway CD. I'm not positive that that is true for Win7 (haven't tried it yet), but I know it is true for WinXP. Of course, a new laptop usually comes with an OS installed, so if you're buying one without an OS it sounds like maybe you aren't getting a mainstream brand anyway so this may not help you.

Thanks for the info Dogma,

My understanding of the MS EULA for XP is that I can use my OEM XP install CD to install XP on any PC I own provided no other PC has XP running and installed from that CD.

Also I understand that MS is more restrictive with Windows 7 and does not licence users to install their copy on any PC other than the one it was first installed on.

My use of XP and Windows software may soon become academic as I am closer and closer to needing only to use Ubuntu.