Computer guru's?

[Jim Becker]

Probably not with windows. It's pretty trivial in unix/unix-like environments. But windows isn't as flexible in that regard as I recall. Then again, it's been years since I did anything outside the *nix environment.

Yes, that's a good point...I hadn't thought of the potential difficulty of transferring the image, but maybe there's an application that would support it. I've drifted away from Windows details over the years...

[Derek Meyer]

Acronis True Image allows you to take full backups of your system and convert them to virtual hard drive files that can then be mounted by a VM. I don't know if it works the other way, though.

[Kev Williams]

Decided to hijack my own thread for awhile

-- I HATE COMPUTERS-- (I think they hate me worse)

NOW: trying to install win8.1 on a new Crucial 1tb internal drive. I formatted the drive in another computer.

Problem: This win8 computer will no way no how read a DVD, CD or flash drive, all of which are bootable.

There's 2 BIOS menus, an old style 'basic' menu:
bios.jpg

and the newfangled UEFI menu... (from an online pic, but exactly like mine)
uefi.jpg
I've gotten into the UEFI menu many times before, not exactly sure how, but basically just tapping F keys during startup. But today, it never shows up...??

The UEFI menu is quite extensive, most important, I can enable and disable hardware in there. In the basic menu, I can't. Yesterday, in trying to get it to boot from a flash drive, I disabled the DVD. Now, I can only find the basic menu, no matter what I try, and while there's plenty of options there's no provision to enable/disable boot devices. I've tried enabling/disabling legacy booting, enabled network booting, which I can't do BUT during one boot up stint the machine DID read the DVD and started loading win7- And I was able to get a command prompt and found the install files on the flash drive-! But like a dummy I closed the win7 install, which closed up the whole deal, and I've been stuck ever since--

except for-- about 1/2 hour ago I tried booting up with the shift key held down and the computer started the win7 install! Like a bigger dummy I figured I found the right boot-up keys to push... but no, that would be too easy --yes, I tried to start over and now left with 'no bootable device found' after every attempt...

I'm pretty sure if I could access the UEFI menu, enabling the DVD drive would allow it to read the win7 disk inside...

Never done a network boot, but seems a bit extensive based on the googling I just did...

[Jim Becker]

It's been "eons" since I did anything like that Kev, but I suspect order of bootable devices is important here, so that the machine will look to your intended boot device first for what you are trying to do.

[Lee DeRaud]

There's 2 BIOS menus, an old style 'basic' menu:
bios.jpg

I'm almost afraid to ask why (and/or how) a HP setup program is running on an Acer laptop...

[Kev Williams]

Lee, it's an HP desktop, I may have posted up something to do with an Acer laptop previously, sorry to confuse

Anyway-- after a few more tries with different F keys and bios changes to no avail, I tried booting up with shift PLUS ctrl, and the thing started loading off the Windows disc!

Taking no chances this time, I paused the install, shift-F10'd to get a prompt, found my flash drive was the E: drive, and ran the Win8 setup-- went about 3 seconds and I got 'this setup isn't compatible with thi version (7) of windows you're running'... heavy sigh...

SO, I'm just finishing the 7 install, hope it takes because, years ago I was told motherboards put in win8 computers didn't play well with win7-- All I want is for it to get far enough that I install win8 as an upgrade or whatever...

Maybe this time...

[Lee DeRaud]

Lee, it's an HP desktop, I may have posted up something to do with an Acer laptop previously, sorry to confuse

Ok, got it, Acer monitor on a desktop machine...just can't believe my lying eyes sometimes.

[Kev Williams]

I didn't notice the Acer monitor, lol...

So, this is a learnt-the-hard-way warning to anyone putting themselves thru similar computer repairs:

DO make sure the host computer is turned off before removing the second computer's drive you just formatted in it...

Yup. The win7 'puter that took me two tries including a reformat to get right, and it WAS right-- I fried the hard drive.

The SSD survived thankfully, so now it's the new win7 drive, while the new win8 is back to square one.

At least all this practice has made the 3rd rebuild go pretty fast. And I know better what's needed to get the old 8 going.

Always a silver lining I guess

[Jim Becker]