[dba-Tech] Windows XP repair on a Ghosted drive

Steve Erbach erbachs at gmail.com
Wed Feb 8 14:32:01 CST 2006


Dear Group,

I'm just checking up to make sure my conceptions about how to do this
are in the ballpark.

My wife's PC has two 160 GB drives, each one divided into two
partitions.  We use Norton Ghost to backup the main 160 GB drive to
the additional drive.  Windows sees the drives as C and D on the main
device, and E and F on the additional drive.

Drive C has begun to go south.  So I Ghosted the device (C & D
together) one last time, and I disconnected the main drive from the
IDE controller and the power supply.  Now I've set the additional
drive to be the Master and am at this moment using the Repair option
off of the Windows XP installation CD to "refresh" Windows on the
"new" drive C.  Of course, if I had simply tried to start up the PC
with the additional drive as the Master, Windows would complain since
the serial number of the drive doesn't match the registry
information...or wherever Windows hides the configuration details that
tell it that you're trying to use an illicit copy of Windows.

I've gotten to the CD key part of the re-install, so things seem to be
going all right.  My question is:  am I correct in assuming that what
needs to be done to get Windows to work properly on this Ghosted drive
is to use the Repair Installation option?  All the data and
applications should remain intact, right?

--
Regards,

Steve Erbach
Scientific Marketing
Neenah, WI
www.swerbach.com
Security Page: www.swerbach.com/security



More information about the dba-Tech mailing list