OT: Cloning windows XP with dd

[Craig White]

On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 19:16 -0700, Alan Dayley wrote:
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> Vaughn Treude wrote:
> > 
> > That's what I can't figure out!  I was thinking there might be some evil
> > checksum or special code somewhere that the HP's BIOS might be checking
> > before allowing it to boot.  But I will try recopying the MBR (or
> > perhaps make a startup disk and try doing a FIXMBR from the recovery
> > console.)
> 
> This applies to Windows 2000 drives but it may, or a version of it,
> apply to Windows XP:
> 
> http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/planning/incremental/sysprep11.asp
> 
> "...Sysprep for Windows 2000 is a simple utility that prepares a system
> on a hard disk for duplication (or cloning) and customization. It does
> not in itself perform the actual duplication of the master image onto
> target machines (third-party utilities are required for this purpose),
> but ensures that the security identifiers (SIDs) are unique for each
> target system..."
> 
> Starting with Windows 2000, unique SIDs are embedded in the drive
> somewhere and are generated or involved the hardware in the system at
> the time of the install.  This ID(s) must be changed or set or whatever
> for the drive to work with the image you copy.  The sysprep utility
> mentioned in the link handles the SIDs for you.
> 
> YMMV. I have never imaged a Windows XP install in this way so I don't
> really know if it applies in your case.  But it makes sense that it would.
> 
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Yeah - he doesn't want to use sysprep - it's a method of preparing for
cloning - not the cloning itself and it's used for mass generation of
prepared images. He simply wants a one-to-one copy whereas sysprep is
designed to make it a one-to-many copy.

Craig


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