Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
The concept seems simple: take a system image of one machine, restore it to another, and avoid lengthy setup time. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
If I want to install a computer backup from a previous computer, complete with its operating system, onto another computer with a different operating system, will the operating system on the backup be allowed to install and override the operating system on the other computer? If so, how do I get around this?
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It's not a question of allowing. By definition, restoring a full image backup will completely overwrite everything that exists on the hard disk, replacing whatever was there before.
So, sure, the previous operating system, along with everything else on the hard disk, will be overwritten and replaced with the contents of the image backup.
The real question is: will what you've just restored then work?
Most of time, the answer is a resounding no.
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What's In Your Operating System Installation
When you install an operating system such as Windows, the setup program goes
through what appears to be pretty much the same sequence of events that it does on every machine: you enter the product key, type in a little information, tell it what
machine name you want and perhaps the time zone, and pick an administrator password. Then, the setup goes to work, showing a progress bar or some
propagandainformation about the benefits of the operating
system you're installing and how wonderful your life together will be.
What happens behind the scenes is significantly more complex.
Almost every machine is different, and it's during Windows installation time that those differences are accounted for.
The Windows installation media contains software for hundreds if not thousands of different pieces of hardware that can be used with Windows. Only the software that applies to your specific machine is installed.
Windows Setup is as much a customization process as it is an installation process.
If your machine came with Windows pre-installed, this still holds true; it just all happened before you received your computer.
What's In A Backup
Let's start with a quick clarification. For purposes of this discussion, people tend to think of two types of backups: data and full.
A data backup is just that - a backup of your data and for the most part only your data. An example might be burning a copy of all your digital photographs to a couple of CDs for safekeeping.
A full backup also lives up to its name: it's a backup of everything. Typically creating what's called a "system image", this type of backup contains everything on the disk including not only your data, but your programs and Windows itself. A true system image can be restored to an empty hard disk on the same machine on which the backup was originally taken.
A full backup, then, contains your Windows installation, including all of the customizations that were made at setup time.
And that's where restoring to a different machine starts to fall apart.
Restoring to a Different Machine
If you take a backup image from machine A, and restore it to a different machine B it's extremely unlikely to work.
The problem is that all of those customizations that happened at setup time on machine A won't apply to machine B. The drivers installed for hardware on machine A that are not present on machine B will fail, and hardware that's present on machine B won't have the required drivers needed.
Given the incredible complexity of the hardware combinations possible with Windows, it's just not very likely that the scenario will work at all. Typically, the machine will simply and completely fail to boot at all.
Restoring to a Different Machine Can Work If....
It is possible for the scenario to work, but there are several conditions that must be met.
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If those conditions are met, then maybe it'll work. And it's a huge if.
It's possible that Windows will be able to boot and that it may then notice that some non-critical hardware has "changed" and go through the process of updating itself, perhaps asking for driver or installation disks, and actually run.
It's actually a very common approach to installations that have a large number of identical machines, but the further you stray from truly identical machines, the lower your chances are of this approach working.
The More Common Alternative
Just because you can't restore and boot from this backup image doesn't mean that the information in that image is lost.
One recovery method is actually quite simple:
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Install Windows and whatever else you want from scratch onto your new or replacement machine (machine B, to use the terminology above).
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Restore your backup image to a second hard drive that is not used for booting and access all of the data from there.
In fact, that last step is even optional. Many backup programs will allow you to browse and extract files from system images. You need not actually restore the entire image at all. Just find what you need and copying it out of the image.
Article C4751 - February 26, 2011
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
it is possible to restore a full backup on a different computer.1.restore full backup. dont boot the system now. 2. insert original windows cd and start. accept first option to install.3.reject option to repair from console and continue 4.when repair option is offered accept.allow windows to complete the installation and allow to finallyy boot.5.now run the original motherboard drivercd of this new machine.6. if necessary reinstall or renter serial numbers of some applications if they demand(some antivirus may ask for reentering serial number.
Posted by: narumanchianji at March 2, 2011 7:59 PMthat is it. the machine should now work almost perfectly. if required sort out minor problems like vga drivers etc.
I was under the impression that some programs like Shadow Protect provide for Hardware Independant Restore. Different Companies use different terms for this but there are several out there. Are you saying that these won't work?
04-Mar-2011
Posted by: Tom at March 4, 2011 4:54 PM
I really don't need to avoid any lengthy setup time on any of my machines. Installing Ubuntu usually takes under 15-20 mins, partitioning and all. I'd like to see a few intro to linux articles on this site.
Posted by: Anthony P. at March 6, 2011 10:12 PMActually, plug ‘n' play systems are supposed to be able to adapt to new hardware and, in fact, that is precisely what Windows used to do thru version 98. You could actually replace the motherboard or move the hard disk from one machine to another and Windows would "discover" the new hardware as it came up and, at worst, it would ask for its installation CD to copy the necessary drivers to the machine's hard disk. (Moreover, if you had copied the "I386" directory to the hard disk and "adjusted" the Registry, it would not even ask for the CD.)
Posted by: Carlos R Coquet at March 8, 2011 10:20 PMNaturally, this was not good for Microsoft and that is probably why they stopped that "convenience" after Windows 98. Generally, if you replace the motherboard in a machine with Windows 2000 or later, Windows will blow up while it boots. And yes, as someone else pointed out, you can boot from the Windows installation CD and run a "repair" operation on the existing \Windows directory and everything will be well. Almost everything. Some software will not. AVG, for example, will not run after a "repair" operation.
I seem to have managed this trick. I was given two computers, one made by Tiny & the other an old Acer. The tiny pc was full of infections & almost unusable. I took the hard drive from that & scanned it with my av in another machine. (My pc decided it would change the boot sequence to the added drive). Thats not good when its got viruses but i knew from past experience that would happen & went into the bios & changed it back before it got the chance to boot from it. So i got rid of all the infections found & put the drive back into the Tiny pc. It was better but blue screened every now & then. I discovered the Joys of the i386 folder & re-installed. Its seems ok now.
And the other pc was given to me without a hard drive. It did have the xp home serial number on it though. Trying the i386 instal failed because it asked for a service pack two disc. I tried making one & got no where. So then i put an image of the Tiny pc on another drive & put that in the acer machine. I let it boot into safe mode, after some time it discovered new hardware & installed that. After re-starting everything in device manager was ok except for the audio. I thought that was strange because the ac97 drivers used in the Tiny pc worked just fine when i told windows where to look. Also activation worked fine for me too because i had the correct serial number for both sets of hardware.
Posted by: Chris at October 25, 2011 2:18 PM