Moving OS to SSD on laptop

[gnimble]

Hello,

I just bought a DV4t laptop from HP. Due to the hard drive heating up problems with this particular laptop, I went out and bought a 60GB SSD which runs a lot cooler. Is there a way to move the Vista x64 Home Premium to the new SSD drive? I thought about reinstalling the OS from scratch, but the HP system does not come with a Windows disk, just a recover disk that will fill up most of the SSD space with bloatware.

Any advice?

Thanks!
Gnimble

 

[pooch]

Hello,

I just bought a DV4t laptop from HP. Due to the hard drive heating up problems with this particular laptop, I went out and bought a 60GB SSD which runs a lot cooler. Is there a way to move the Vista x64 Home Premium to the new SSD drive? I thought about reinstalling the OS from scratch, but the HP system does not come with a Windows disk, just a recover disk that will fill up most of the SSD space with bloatware.

Any advice?

Thanks!
Gnimble

Hi Gnimble,

Welcome to the Forum.

You can best do this an external USB Drive Enclosure, in which you put the new HDD. Then you need a good Disc cloning program which will allow you to copy the contents of one disc to another. Make sure you buy the right type Take your drive with you when you buy.

Be aware of the licensing restrictions of Vista

For Info;
Hard Disk Manager Suite – complete system management

I hope this helps

Pooch

 

[gnimble]

Thank you for the reply :-) I decided to do a clean Vista 64 installation since my new SSD is smallish at 60GB. I got a Vista 64 disk from my brother so I can do a clean install of Vista 64 onto my HP DV4T laptop. Unfortunately, a little bit into the installation and while trying to expand files, I get the following error:

"Windows cannot access the required file D:\Source\Install.wim. The file may be corrupt or missing. Make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error Code: 0x80070017"

The strange thing is that if I were to exit to a prompt, I can change directory to the D:\Sources and see that Install.wim is there.

I've combed the web for information on this error and a lot of posts say something about SATA drivers. I'm confused since I can see files on both the 60GB Solid Series SSD and DVD. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Gnimble

 

[pooch]

Thank you for the reply :-) I decided to do a clean Vista 64 installation since my new SSD is smallish at 60GB. I got a Vista 64 disk from my brother so I can do a clean install of Vista 64 onto my HP DV4T laptop. Unfortunately, a little bit into the installation and while trying to expand files, I get the following error:

"Windows cannot access the required file D:\Source\Install.wim. The file may be corrupt or missing. Make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error Code: 0x80070017"

The strange thing is that if I were to exit to a prompt, I can change directory to the D:\Sources and see that Install.wim is there.

I've combed the web for information on this error and a lot of posts say something about SATA drivers. I'm confused since I can see files on both the 60GB Solid Series SSD and DVD. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Gnimble

Have a look here;
Part 2: Installing Windows Vista, Cannot find file d:\sources\install.wim

Pooch

 

[gnimble]

Thanks Pooch.

There are some weird solutions posted on that site. One include tilting the DVD drive by a certain degree, and others saying to use an older DVD drive. I'll try them tonight, but on a spanking new system, I don't have access to and old DVD drive and I don't know if tilting the new DVD drive would work.

One solution I'll definitely try is this:

"Anyway, my solution was to let the setup run normally. Then, after it copied the files and tried to unpack them, it got the error message. I then used the recovery thing in the main install screen to open up the command screen (cmd).
I typed in setup.exe (while in the directory X:\sources) and the setup ran again. This time it worked."

If that does not work, I'll follow the suggestions from those on the OCZ forums regarding slipstreaming drivers into the Vista using vlite.

There seems to be a lot of people with this problem. I install Windows XP on many systems [since I rebuild systems to give out] and never get an error like this. I wonder why there is not an official solution from Microsoft since the problems date back a few years!

Cheers,
Gnimble

 

[pooch]

Thanks Pooch.

There are some weird solutions posted on that site. One include tilting the DVD drive by a certain degree, and others saying to use an older DVD drive. I'll try them tonight, but on a spanking new system, I don't have access to and old DVD drive and I don't know if tilting the new DVD drive would work.

One solution I'll definitely try is this:

"Anyway, my solution was to let the setup run normally. Then, after it copied the files and tried to unpack them, it got the error message. I then used the recovery thing in the main install screen to open up the command screen (cmd).
I typed in setup.exe (while in the directory X:\sources) and the setup ran again. This time it worked."

If that does not work, I'll follow the suggestions from those on the OCZ forums regarding slipstreaming drivers into the Vista using vlite.

There seems to be a lot of people with this problem. I install Windows XP on many systems [since I rebuild systems to give out] and never get an error like this. I wonder why there is not an official solution from Microsoft since the problems date back a few years!

Cheers,
Gnimble

TBH it is the first time that I have heard of this problem. It might also be an idea to copy the DVD burning the new copy with the drive that you use to install. I am thinking; that what it writes it must also read.

Another answer that I read somewhere that works for some people is to remove a stick of RAM

Let me know how you get on

Pooch

 

[gnimble]

Haven't installed Vista before, it's the first time I've seen it too. But on my search for the solution, I see many posts from others with the same problem.

If none of the other tries work, I might consider putting back the old drive and re-create the Vista 64 installation DVD on the laptop and try again. But I hope not to do that. I'll try removing a stick of ram first. Being SODIMM, there are only two slots on a laptop. Mine is currently 2GB (2 x 1GB SODIMM). I don't know if they are required to be there in pairs or not. I read that other people has 4 sticks on their PC and had 4GB or more. Reducing that number helped them.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me out!

Cheers,
Gnimble

 

[gnimble]

Just thought I would update this thread with my finding. It turned out that I do have a bad copy of Vista. I manually tried to copy the files off the DVD and ran into reading errors. Once I re-master the OS DVD, the installation went pretty smooth.

Thanks everyone for your help!

Cheers,
Gnimble

 

[gnimble]

Very strange... I see a reply sent to my email with a link to this forum, yet that replied is not here yet. I don't know if it will ever be...

-----
rive0108 has just replied to a thread you have subscribed to entitled - Moving OS to SSD on laptop - in the General Discussion forum of Vista Forums.

Here is the message that has just been posted: Why not just image the drive, repplace the new drive and then restore the old drive's image? I did it with mine. it is very easy. If you are running Premium or Basic use this:Free Drive Backup Express - disk backup software (Free Drive Backup Express - disk backup software )
---End Quote---

The main reason I want to reinstall Vista again is to remove all the bloatware that gets installed on the system cleanly. The only way to do that is to reinstall Vista from scratch and then just install the laptop drivers.

Once I was able to complete this, I thought about doing an image backup so I don't have to spent all the time to reinstall and set up all my Vista configurations. The funny thing is that I downloaded the x64 bit version of this Drive Express Backup software and installed it with no errors. When it asks to reboot my system, my system shuts down but was never able to boot cleanly again. I keep getting the blue screen of death upon boot up. I tried going back to a restore point prior to installing long, but never got beyond the BSOD.

So in my quest to create a backup for my system, I ended up hosing it. Doh! I reinstalled all the software again and now am looking for another backup software to backup my system again. I installed DriveImage XML but that does not work with Vista 64. I will try Reflect as suggested in another thread.

Cheers,
Gnimble