Microsoft says no:
"Drive Letters and the %SystemRoot% Folder
For a complete migration to work correctly, the %SystemRoot% folder (the
Windows folder in Windows XP) and the drive letters for any (target)
volumes that contain a system-state component must be the same on both
the source computer and the destination computer. This means that if the
source computer has, for example, Windows XP Professional installed in
the C:\Windows folder and has Active Directory (NTDS) and SYSVOL on
separate drives, drive D and drive E respectively, the destination
computer must have Windows XP pre-installed in a C:\Windows folder and
contain drives D and E before the restore operation can succeed. "
Now I have not tried this and it's a lot to change, but you could search
& replace all the references in the registry from E:\ to D:\ by mounting
the restored drive D:\ copies hives with using another copy of windows &
using a registry tool like Funduc's Registry Toolkit
http://www.funduc.com/. Some things like window's root path %SystemRoot%
is dynamically set at boot other paths are hard coded like
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%, etc...
These are some of the relevant registry keys:
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell
Folders"
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders"
Plus copies for each user's SID under HKEY_USERS.
Then you have the Local Machine keys:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion"
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup"
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell
Folders"
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders"
Of course apps will have their paths hard coded in the registry and/or
ini's, dat's, etc... so that makes it even more problematic. Suffice to
say without Registry Toolkit & some GREP tool I would not even attempt
it YMMV.
Winterlight wrote:
I have a PC with XP PRO running on logical drive E:> The boot
partition is C and completely seperate. I have 2k on logical drive D:>.
I would like to get rid of the 2K and make it a clone of my XP without
doing the work. Fortunately, when I did the XP build last month, I made
progressive image file backups ..... first boot... drivers installed...
patched... that sort of progression.
What I would like to do is restore the E:> image on the D:> partition,
it will fit, at a basic install with all drivers and patched. No apps
other then what installed with All in Wonder Drivers. So when I boot it
up, the only thing that would be wrong is the paths to everything....
D:> instead of E:>.
Has anybody tried something like this. It would save a lot of time...but
would it work... would it sort itself out?
thanks
