Cloning

[Evil_genius82]

Hi Everyone,
I've tried searching for a solution for this but I have not found nothing exactly identical to my problem.
I have 3 identical PC's (apart from HDD) with 3 copies of Windows XP Pro. As you know it takes a long time to install windows, drivers, updates & applications. Im asking if there is a way to clone one ready PC and then install them on other PC's.

Is it ok as the HDD are different? Also if everything is ok, how do I activate the windows versions with the proper keys?

Thanks in Advance

[rch1231]

Hello,

There are several ways to configure the systems. Your best bet if the hard drives are not exactly the same is to use a hard drive cloning program. Take a look at UBCD4WIN (Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows) It is a free down load that you create on another system using your XP or Vista installation as source to create a Boot CD and there are around 50 utilities for repairing, scannig and copying drives.

Here is a link to a wiki with information on the CD and where to download for free:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBCD4Win

[Evil_genius82]

Thanks for the info friend. Ill give this a try!
Will get back to you when finished.

Thanks again

[gerbil]

Partition Wizard. Easy as. Free. You can fit to disk or resize partitions on the fly.

[Evil_genius82]

Great help. I used partition wizard in the end and it was ready in minutes. As source HD was 500gb, I had to create a partition to match the size of the secondary HD (which was 320gb).

Thanks everyone.

[gerbil]

It does make the job easy. Note that it, like most such tools, does its job as a queue on a restart of the sys, so naturally enough they provide a bootable version which has the same capabilities and GUI. Nice.