Vista anyone?

[Skoggmeiger]

A colleague brought her own laptop into work today. Brand new Packard Bell Dual Core. Nice little machine. Anyway, it came with Vista Home Premium on it and for the time being, she wanted XP putting back on it.

I told her I would image the machine as it is now, so she can always revert back to it when she needs to. (SP1 onwards )

I used the built in restore DVD creation Utility, as for some reason, my usual weapon of choice Acronis, wouldn't work.

As I had nothing better to do, I thought I'd try this Restore DVD on a Dell Latitude.

Result? I have a fully working pre-registered Packard Bell version of Vista Home Premium running absolutely fine, on a Dell Latitude.

Rather chuffed that it worked. I shall of course be removing it from the Dell, as It's my friends Vista and I don't want Microsoft noticing there are multiple copies doing the rounds, but I think this highlights a slight flaw in both Vista and Packard Bells Restore utility.

8)

Edit: New it was too good to be true. Of course it still needs Activating. (Automatically in 3 days).Was still impressed that it installed though. I've tried things like this in the past and fallen at the first hurdle, i.e. "This utilty will only run on Dell Latitudes" etc

[Halfmad]

XP can also be transfered like this a lot of the time, if the motherboard and HDD drivers are similar then it generally just autodetects the rest.

I'm Vista will be similar to XP in how easy it is to deploy with Acronis/Ghost etc.

[Skoggmeiger]

It wasn't done using Ghost or Acronis though. It was done using Packard Bell's own utility, and restores all of thier own software too, which works. It's this that I'm surprised by.

[Nij.UK]

i think it might be the way that vista install now.

it is basically one image which is compressed, and all the installer does is decompress it and copy it to its correct location.

There is a tool to also update the core vista image with new updates etc as and when they are released.

i think the image util that comes with vista is called ImageX

[mrforgetful]

You'll find that the Windows Vista Ultimate you can get on the Pirate ships are Dell.

The way it's cracked at the moment is to fool it into thinking you're on a Dell PC and you're using the Dell preActivated copy of Vista.

[JoHimself]

before using Ghost with Vista you need to run the "net-runna Vista Preparation Tool" then sysprep (with an xml file if you want unattended setup) after that it just images as normal.

Just an FYI