I'm helping a friend out with an issue he just ran into. He has a Dell Latitude E5400 that has software on it to control some equipment. The laptop has been having issues but the hard drive seems to be fine. The company that made the equipment has been bought out and he has no way to reinstall it onto a new computer. Here are the options I was thinking of and wanted to see which would be the best or if there would be a better option I didn't think of. 1) buy a used Latitude E5400 and put the hard drive in it. May need to reactivate XP I'd think but should work? 2) use Sysprep to move the hard drive to another computer. As long as the new computers hardware has xp drivers should work? 3) Just put the hard drive into another computer and see if it work? I'd make a disk image before doing anything so I'd have a back up just in case anything goes wrong. Would there be a better route to take? Thanks
@sprtfan: Option 1 is probably the best solution, albeit the most expensive. If your friend is experiencing hardware issues, this option should fix it. Option 2 may not work, because most Windows apps store settings in the registry. Option 3 is a bad choice, because if the hardware is radically different, Windows will not start correctly, and will probably BSOD. Please tell us a little bit about the hardware that you friend is trying to control. That will help us to determine the best path for success.
The hardware is a high resolution retinal camera. The software is OIS Eyescan. The company was bought out a few times and the new owners basically said that they couldn't/wouldn't help. Thanks
I would make an image and try to install it to another spare computer if have one just for the play of it i have had good rewards with EaseUS Todo Backup (made a bootable usb from program) or pretty sure acronis 2016 has same i use the bootable usb and do image and install to another laptop or desktop (Dissimilar Hardware) i have done many repair reinstall over the top of xp but never this dissimilar software (i never had it then) Good Luck
I might make an image just to have it anyway and try to install it on another laptop to see if it works. I wouldn't be out anything to give it a try. Also, the Dell Latitude E5400 are pretty cheap on eBay and could go that route also.
I have been cloning images for WinXP and Win7 between hard drives for D610's D620's D630's and an E5520 without too much difficulty. as long as the display works to some degree, and you can plug a usb mouse into it you can load the drivers for the things that don't work One thing you need a print screen of the devices in detail on the target computer before you start so you have a clue as to what the unknown devices are it's frustrating to install what you think is the driver and have it do nothing ...T