I've cloned XP off my desktop onto a new drive for my laptop, trouble is it doesn't work ! I expected the different hardware would be an issue but thought that XP would automatically go through the new hardware guff, much in the same way as if you changed any system components.

If I run the cloned drive on the desktop PC it was cloned from it works fine (no surprise) but when I run it on the laptop it gets as far as the XP loading splash and a few seconds later blue screens, looking up the code gives a multitude of reasons and many conflicting solutions - none of which are an easy fix anyway. Tried booting from the XP CD (upgrade) to do a repair but that won't even run, a different blue screen this time with a pci.sys error, I can't understand why a CD won't boot ? Even pressing F2 and F8 at boot gets me to the right screens but won't run any of the options - bringing up yet more errors.

I remember from a long time ago something about deleting an entire registry tree, possibly the hardware one, so that the OS would go through the hardware setup but I can't remember which one. Anyone help, or know an easy way of moving XP from a desktop to a laptop ?

Honestly, while it's more than likely possible to get it work, why not just reinstall? It'll be more stable in the long run.

I mean, it's not like you swapped a motherboard - you're swapping EVERYTHING!

And XP? It's 10 years old man! Is it a new laptop? What OS did it ship with?

Also, what version of XP on CD are you using - i.e. original, SP2, SP3? If you have PCI-Express on your laptop you need at least SP2. If it's below this you'll need to make a slipstreamed install CD or disable PCI-Express in your bios. At least, I think that's right. I kept getting a pci.sys error a while back doing something similar (although not quite as mad) and I seem to remember that was the fix.

Edit: sorry - that's to cynicoid

I can't do a re-install as I only have an upgrade disk and all my OS's have been upgrades since Win3.11 - so no full software until W7, plus the laptop doesn't have a floppy drive so I can't go that route.

I have to install XP as there are a couple of programs that will not run on W7 or Vista and I absolutely need them, there are no alternatives that I could export the data to. I can't do a repair via the upgrade disk as I've since patched to SP3 and the original disk doesn't like that.

I've changed full system components before (m/board, graphics, soundcard, memory, processor) and every time the OS has picked up the change and re-installed all the neccessary drivers no problem, I thought moving to a laptop would have been much the same.

Looks like I'll have to keep dual-booting on my desktop then. The annoying thing is if MS reduced the price of its legacy software rather than keeping it at full price I'd go out and buy another copy to install.

Can't do XP mode with my version of W7, can't use a previous OS disk as they've all been upgrade disks and there's an issue with the files being older than the ones I'm trying to repair.

Think I'll ask Captain Sparrow for a copy but then there's the whole issue of hidden nasties. Going to have a go a deleting some hardware registry keys to see if that works, nothing to lose as everytings backed up and cloned so I can always get back to my current position.