How To Move Apps To New Machine?
Bill Hines
I currently have a machine running NT 4.0 Workstation and dual boot to
Win95, which has FP98, Peer Web Services, and my other apps running on
it. I just bought a new machine and now want to use it for my primary
computer. How can I easily move my apps (Office97, etc) over to the
new machine? I want to keep all of my settings and preferences. Is
there an easy way to do this, or at least easier than just installing
and trying to reconfigure every app? Some will be easy but I know some
had a lot of settings and so forth to do, then on top of that the
patches, etc.
Thanks, Bill
Bill Hines
Microsoft Certified Professional
Blue Sky Computing Corp
Hershey, PA
Bill Starbuck
>How can I easily move my apps (Office97, etc) over to the
>new machine? I want to keep all of my settings and preferences. Is
>there an easy way to do this, or at least easier than just installing
>and trying to reconfigure every app?
I think the safest course, by far, and usually the fastest course is
to reinstall the applications. But if you are a risktaker, you could
(a) reinstall the apps aand then (b) transfer copies of the current
installation on top of the new one.
Bill Starbuck (MVP)
To learn more about Microsoft's MVP program, go to
support.microsoft.com and select "Newsgroups" from the menu on
the leftside.
Len Segal
Bill,
You sound like you want to "clone" the HDD. Even that won't be easy when you
install it on a new machine.
Best bet is to use a utility such as Partition Magic or Ghost
(www.ghost.com) to create a duplicate HDD. You will need to remove all the
hardware dependent devices from Control Panel, System, Device Manager;
reboot; and let the system reconfigure itself for the particular hardware
you have in the new machine.
Any way you do it, it is not trivial and will take some time to setup
correctly.
Regards,
Len Segal, MCP
Segal Computer Consulting
Microsoft - MVP (DTS), ClubWin
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Bill Hines wrote in message <357e960c...@msnews.microsoft.com>...
I currently have a machine running NT 4.0 Workstation and dual boot to
Win95, which has FP98, Peer Web Services, and my other apps running on
it. I just bought a new machine and now want to use it for my primary
computer. How can I easily move my apps (Office97, etc) over to the
new machine? I want to keep all of my settings and preferences. Is
there an easy way to do this, or at least easier than just installing
Tom Capote (MCSE)
you can try Drive Image from Powerquest at;
http://www.powerquest.com/product/di/index.html
Hope this helps!
--
Tom Capote
-------------------------------------------
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE)
Microsoft Backoffice MVP - Windows NT
A+ Certified Technician
MS Sitebuilder - Level 1
Hans-Georg Michna
bi...@blueskycomputing.com (Bill Hines) wrote:
>I currently have a machine running NT 4.0 Workstation and dual boot to
>Win95, which has FP98, Peer Web Services, and my other apps running on
>it. I just bought a new machine and now want to use it for my primary
>computer. How can I easily move my apps (Office97, etc) over to the
>new machine? I want to keep all of my settings and preferences. Is
>there an easy way to do this, or at least easier than just installing
>and trying to reconfigure every app? Some will be easy but I know some
>had a lot of settings and so forth to do, then on top of that the
>patches, etc.
Bill:
Assuming NTFS, install a temporary copy of NT into a temporary
directory on the new disk/computer that will later be deleted.
Do not use the name of the directory of your original NT
installation. Then restore your complete hard disk from backup
tape.
That's all, provided you have formatted the new drive with NT.
If not, you may have an unsuitable boot sector there. Use the
emergency repair procedure and have the boot sector "repaired".
That should do. Also, don't forget to make the boot partition
the active partition and don't forget any of the "trivial"
things, like required BIOS or SCSI adapter settings.
Obviously for that you have to have an emergency repair disk in
the first place. Create it with RDISK /S before you begin to
dismantle your working system. And have those three NT boot
diskettes at hand. A simple NT boot diskette, i.e. a normal
diskette, formatted from NT and containing the three boot files
BOOT.INI, NTDETECT.COM and NTLDR, can be helpful too, for
example when you have the wrong BOOT.INI but cannot get at it
because it's on NTFS.
Alternatively, connect the new hard disk to your old computer
directly or over the network and copy everything over using
SCOPY (from the Resource Kit of NT 3.51 or later). Use the /o
switch if you want to keep ownership information along with the
access rights which are always copied by SCOPY. Make sure you
have administrator rights on all involved machines. Again you
have to make sure you have the proper boot sector.
Note that this method also allows you to create an NTFS
partition larger than 4 GB on the new hard disk, using Disk
Manager. For this it is in some cases important to deactivate
sector remapping in a SCSI adapter.
Unless you also use a temporary NT installation as described
above, you will not be able to copy the entire SYSTEM32\CONFIG
directory that way, but you can run RDISK.EXE /S to write fresh
copies into the REPAIR directory, then expand the missing
registry files from there, using EXPAND.EXE. You will also have
to do some gymnastics to get the user profile NTUSER.DAT
registry hives copied. It is probably much easier to use a
temporary NT installation for the copy process.
Further ways to copy a whole installation are Ghost, a third
party disk copy utility from Ghostsoft or the new Drivecopy from
the makers of the renowned Partition Magic or some similar
utility, and, if both disks are of equal size, establishing a
mirror, waiting for the two disks to synchronize, then breaking
the mirror and removing the old drive.
If you only want to move your user base from an old domain
controller to a new one, you can simply install the new one as a
backup domain controller, wait until the user base is
synchronized, then promote the new machine to primary domain
controller. After that you can switch off the old server.
But, assuming you want to copy the whole system, there are a few
more little problems. I'll mention them one by one.
1. Different Driver
What if your new computer needs a different driver for the new
hard disk controller?
The most elegant solution here is to plan ahead and install the
new driver already before you make the move, alongside the old
one.
If the driver refuses to install because it doesn't see its
hardware, there are three ways to proceed. One is to temporarily
move the new controller into the old computer alongside the old
one, then install the driver, then move the controller back. The
other is to do the temporary NT installation on the new system
first, then transplant the driver. This requires to export and
import the settings for the new driver from and to the registry,
and copying all driver files. If the driver puts several files
into NT that you cannot easily find, peruse its installation
.INF file to get a clue about which files to copy. The third is
to reinstall NT over the copied installation, so it can pick up
the new hardware and install the required drivers.
2. Can't Access CD
How can you install a driver from the CD if you cannot access
the CD in the first place?
The easiest solution is to plan ahead and install the driver
already before you move the system. But there is another simple
solution that has some other advantages. Copy the I386 directory
(assuming Intel) to your hard disk before you move or to the new
hard disk by other means, like over the network.
3. Forgot Settings for Network Adapter
Plan ahead and take notes from your old NT installation. Write
down all essential settings, so you can quickly re-install the
network driver in the temporary NT installation.
4. Upgrading from Uniprocessor to Multiprocessor System
For this you need the utility UPTOMP.EXE, contained in the
Resource Kit. If this does not work, you may have a version of
this tool that is broken. The latest version should work,
however.
5. Done All This But Still Failed
The most important way out of here is again to plan ahead and
not simply restore the old BOOT.INI over the one of the
temporary installation. Instead, keep a copy of the original
BOOT.INI, then merge this manually with the new BOOT.INI, such
that you have the choice to boot either the temporary or the
restored installation.
Then boot into the temporary installation. (The restored one
didn't work, otherwise you wouldn't be doing this.) Fire up
REGEDT32.EXE, load the problem hive, most likely the SYSTEM
hive, from your restored NT (SYSTEM32\CONFIG) into HKEY_USERS
and repair the problem manually in the CurrentControlSet key.
Then save the hive to where it came from and remove it from
HKEY_USERS. Never forget to make backup copies, so you can
revert quickly when things don't work.
WARNING: Using Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE or REGEDT32.EXE)
incorrectly can cause serious, system-wide problems that may
require you to reinstall Windows NT to correct them. I cannot
guarantee that any problems resulting from the use of Registry
Editor can be solved. Back up your registry first (using either
NTBackup.exe or RDisk.exe /s), then use the Registry Editor at
your own risk.
If all this doesn't help or if you are not conversant with
REGEDIT, then there is still a way out. Repair the SYSTEM hive
using the three boot diskettes and the emergency repair disk
from the temporary installation. If you don't have an emergency
repair disk, create one using RDISK.EXE /S. Note, however, that
this method may lead to losing some information from the SYSTEM
hive. RAS is one example for a subsystem that keeps settings
there. You may have to re-install a few things that don't work.
But you will probably get your restored NT up and running.
Note also that there's an article in the Microsoft Knowledge
Base about this subject. It makes for quite different reading,
so you may want to read that too and decide which you like
better.
If you decide to do this, please let me know which problems you
encountered, if any.
Hans-Georg
[No mail please]
Richard Brennan
Bill Hines wrote in message <357e960c...@msnews.microsoft.com>...
>...How can I easily move my apps (Office97, etc) over to the
>new machine? I want to keep all of my settings and preferences. Is
>there an easy way to do this, or at least easier than just installing
>and trying to reconfigure every app? ..
When you install an application in Windows or NT, it creates entries in the
OS's Registry database. Some entries are created on the computer side of the
Registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE), and others on the User side
(HKEY_CURRENT_USER). Most programs will not run without these entries.
Office 97 itself creates about 8000 entries at installation.
If you just copy the installed apps over to another hard drive - you still
won't have these entries in Registry database on the new machine. So, the
application will give you an error message saying it can't find important
files.
Copying the Registry database from one machine to another is unworkable
because the hardware on the new machine does not match exactly the hardware
on the old machine - and those settings are also in the registry.
It is possible to artfully save only selected registry settings on the old
machine and then import them to the new - but the chances of success, given
the massive changes scattered throughout the system at installation, are not
good. (If you want to take a stab at this method - the Office Resource Kit
CD has an XLS file that lists all the registry changes that happen during a
complete Office 97 Installation. So, at least, the stuff is documented.)
IMHO, the swiftest course for success is to reinstall from scratch. This
has the added advantage of allowing you to build a fresh Registry database,
uncluttered from years of previous installed / uninstalled / updated app
issues. In other words - you give your system a fresh start.
Before you do this, you want to identify any "hidden" data files that may
get left behind. Outlook .pab and .pst files, for example. A customized
Normal.dot. A customized dictionary. Fortunately, if something is missing
you can always go back the old machine and get it.
Good luck!
// Richard Brennan, MCT
r...@ibm.net