Hi
With acronis you would probably get best results.
Somebody in a german thread said that you could also change the motherboard and reload the acronis file.
After playing up the backup i think you will have to configure stuff right.(like drivers and stuff witch are different.
But with nearly similar machines it should work.
Haven’t done this by myself yet.
Give it a try and give us a feedback.
Greetz Bassbase
If the hardware is identical you can image the original machine and duplicate it to the other hardware.
There are configuration changes to be made, e.g. machine name and TCP/IP configuration (if you’re using a static IP address and not DHCP).
Other changes may be necessary depending on the software installed on the source machine, e.g. changing the SQL Server machine name in the master schema tables (which is a pain in the arse by the way). You probably won’t have any of these to deal with.
I believe there is a serial number buried inside of CPUs that MS uses to validate their OSs. Else nobody would ever purchase a second license.
I have Acronis 2010 and the optional, more $$, Plus Pack. I assume that if I get a hard failure I will be able to restore to a new machine. But I expect to have to re-authorize Windows. I also assume that during the restore Acronis will pause and ask for any hardware specific drivers that the new machine will need.
I have restored the OS drive, nasty virus, and it worked perfectly, almost. OneNote, which kept its files on a different non-restored hard disk, got out of synch with some hidden date/time stamp and got its pointy little head all confused.
You probably still have TCP/IP configured. Just because you don’t connect to the Internet doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. TCP/IP is used for 99% of all networking, so if you’re going to connect two machines together you’ll need it. But 99% of all computers are in some form of a network so I’m pretty confident that it also gets installed by default.
Surfer is correct about the embedded ID. It’s not a serial number per se - instead, Windows keeps track of what hardware is present when Windows was installed. If the hardware detected during boot differs greatly from what was originally recorded then Windows requires that you re-authenticate with Microsoft. I don’t know what constitutes “greatly” but I know you can do things like add memory without triggering the re-auth requirement.
Advanced cloning of non-biological devices will not be available until late 2029. Unfortunately, it will be a short lived technological advance, since the 100 year anniversary of the great depression is planned to be cloned in its entirety, and this will of course occur in year 2030. 