XP Installation Question

[AgentZed]

I've managed to dig myself in quite a nice little hole, and I'm hoping for a hand getting back out of it. My sister's HD went all misbehavey, and after fiddling with it for a while, I decided the only way I could fix it would be to take it home, slap it into my computer, save all the data, and then do a full format & reinstall. She wasn't too enamoured with the idea, but since it was 2am and I just wanted to go to bed, I told her that I'd have the drive fully functional & ready to go by the time she finished work today.

Unfortunately, it turns out her partition table went splat, and it took me most of the day just to recover her data. Now my problem is that I'm not entirely sure what the best way to get XP back onto her HD is... I considered unplugging my drives, slapping hers in there and doing it that way, but since I have 2 drives RAID-0'd together, I'm concerned about messing that somehow and borking my system to fix my sister's. If I could install XP from my computer (running Vista/OpenSuse dual boot), that'd be ideal, but I don't know of any way to do that. I don't need to do any configuration or software installation on it before I return it to her, I just need a working copy of XP on there.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Harvey]

You won't be able to install XP on one machine and transfer it to another unless it uses the same motherboard, or at least a similar model with the same chipset.

The better way to retrieve the data would be to attach the drive to another running machine as a slave and copy the needed info. Then, when you re-install XP and software, transfer it back to the new installation.

 

[bldegle2]

Actually, you can do this very easily....

Make sure that your sister's HD is the only one attached to your system....make sure your internet connection is disabled, format and install XP.....then hook up the drive you saved the files to, transfer data back to HD, I suggest a separate folder...shut down, yank HD..boogy on over to your sisters house, hook up HD, and then fire her up, load chipset drivers, and complete the install and make sure the internet is active this time....

XP is pretty wonderful in this respect, I have done this numerous times, even completely different chipsets, just make sure the loaded OS is pristine and unfettered with updates and chipset drivers, etal...

Be prepared with the install CD, sometimes it takes a tickle from a repair install to get it to boot, again, never had a failure....

Unfortunately, this means you will be spending some more quality time with your sis again, adding proggies, transferring the saved infos, and waiting for the zillions of MS updates to finally finish..

sounds like a lost weekend should do it, LOL

laterzzz

 

[Silverthorne]

Check out Sysprep it's a very useful app. You could reinstall windows on the harddrive, copy over the saved files and then run sysprep and put the HDD in your sisters computer.