Catastrophic PC failure

**TheBigD** · 2 April 2009, 11:57

Not really a Windows man, but I think you may run into probles with driver support. Once you restore your OS onto the new machine, if it's radically different hardware, it may not be bootable.

May be worth checking out Acronis Universal Restore. Gets round this problem by stripping out all the drivers when you restore the image.

**voodooflux** · 2 April 2009, 12:04

If you just want to grab some files from the Ghost image then you should be able to use Ghost Explorer (part of the Ghost quite I think). Failing that you might be able to mount the file as drive via some other utility.

**NickFitz** · 2 April 2009, 13:06

I've never attempted it, but in theory I think you could restore from the Ghost image, then boot into Safe Mode and get all the necessary drivers into place.

If it doesn't work, well, at least you tried

**chicane** · 2 April 2009, 13:26

Originally posted by NickFitz View Post

I've never attempted it, but in theory I think you could restore from the Ghost image, then boot into Safe Mode and get all the necessary drivers into place.

If it doesn't work, well, at least you tried

I reckon this would work - you could go into device manager in safe mode and delete/disable all the devices that didn't apply to the new machine. A reboot in "normal" mode should then bring the machine up in a usable state.

The downfall would be all the Windows cruft transferred from your existing computer to the new one. In all honesty you might want to start from scratch with the new machine and restore your data only. A fresh install of XP is a breath of fresh air when you're accustomed to being bogged down by one with a couple of years of cruft on it.

**TheBigD** · 2 April 2009, 13:28

Originally posted by chicane View Post

I reckon this would work - you could go into device manager in safe mode and delete/disable all the devices that didn't apply to the new machine. A reboot in "normal" mode should then bring the machine up in a usable state.

The downfall would be all the Windows cruft transferred from your existing computer to the new one. In all honesty you might want to start from scratch with the new machine and restore your data only. A fresh install of XP is a breath of fresh air when you're accustomed to being bogged down by one with a couple of years of cruft on it.

If the new hardware wa completly different, then I don't think the machine would boot, eveni n safe mode.

**chicane** · 2 April 2009, 13:35

Originally posted by TheBigD View Post

If the new hardware wa completly different, then I don't think the machine would boot, eveni n safe mode.

I stand corrected - I always imagined booting in safe mode would be similar to booting with no hardware drivers installed. A bit like the way Windows is on first boot following installation - 800x600 VGA, no network etc.

**TheBigD** · 2 April 2009, 13:45

I think if the hardware is somewhat similar, you can get away with it. I'm not really a windows bod, but I've tried to recover a failed desktop before in this way and it didn't work for me.

**NickFitz** · 2 April 2009, 13:52

Originally posted by chicane View Post

I stand corrected - I always imagined booting in safe mode would be similar to booting with no hardware drivers installed. A bit like the way Windows is on first boot following installation - 800x600 VGA, no network etc.

To be precise, it boots with a minimal set of drivers, and is intended for the purpose of adding or removing drivers. AFAIK, it uses the Windows default drivers, so even if the hardware is radically different, it should still boot as it's not relying on any of the hardware-specific drivers from the old machine.

Back in the days of Win95, I've swapped out a motherboard for a new one which didn't even have the same family of processor (from Intel Pentium to an AMD K-something) and was able to boot from the existing Windows installation into Safe Mode and get everything as stable as one could expect with Win95. I would assume the same is possible with XP.

**NotAllThere** · 2 April 2009, 14:24

I did once do a direct swap of a laptop harddrive into a different model of the same make (not radically different - they were probably same year of manufacture), and that worked a treat - didn't even need safe mode!

What would happen, in future, if I just ran everything under VM? Could I then just build another PC, make a new VM of the same config, and restore...

Anyway, I'll see what happens when I do a restore. It's not a very important PC, but it'd be nice to have it running - especially on a new machine - the motherboard and chip are 4 years old; other components are approaching 8...

Thanks a lot!

Catastrophic PC failure