So I got some new systems for my parents. Needs to have Windows 7 on them, complete with a number of applications they use. Quite a lot of work to prepare one (I’m quite a bit of a windows noob), so didn’t want to do it twice.

Searched the internet for information and finally got some good tips from a friend up north.

To begin I made an image backup of the installed system. Unsure if my attempts to copy it to the second system would be successful, I wanted to make sure I had a backup. So in true Linux fashion I booted the system over the net using my PXEBoot with a UnionFS based NFS root and a kernel supporting all the hardware.

Now to make an image. The system has 3 partition, the first one seems to be VFAT and the other 2 NTFS. So to prepare I got some tools I needed on the NFS image:

I copied everything to my fileserver over ssh.

To make it a bit more reproducable, I made it into a (stupid) simple shellscript. First it backups the MBR and partition table. Then it just block level backups the first partition and uses ntfsclone to backup the second and third partitions.

echo “Creating image with name $1” echo “Press enter to start” read line echo “Dumping MBR” dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 | ssh fileserver “cat - > $BASEDIR/$1.bootsect” echo “Dumping partition table” sfdisk -d /dev/sda | ssh fileserver “(cd $BASEDIR ; cat - > $1.parttable)” echo “Imaging partition 1” dd if=/dev/sda1 of=- bs=1024 | gzip -c | buffer -S 10240 | ssh fileserver “(cd $BASEDIR ; cat - > $1.sda1.gz)” echo “Imaging partition 2” time ntfsclone –save-image –output - /dev/sda2 | gzip -c | ssh fileserver “cat - > $BASEDIR/$1.sda2.gz” echo “Imaging partition 3” time ntfsclone –save-image –output - /dev/sda3 | gzip -c | ssh fileserver “cat - > $BASEDIR/$1.sda3.gz”

So using this shellscript I first backuped the system.

Then it was time to get Windows in such a state that it could be transferred to another system (exactly the same hardware BTW). I ended up using sysprep to do this. It seems this is the best way to start it. Start a cmd window and do:

After waiting for a bit this failed. Fortunatly the command leaves behind a logfile in the directory:

That gave me at least some clue. It turned out you have to stop the service:

After stopping the service, the sysprep command ran without a problem.

Now I booted the system over the network again and made a new image with the same shellscript.

Then I hooked up the second system and booted that off the network. I made a new script to restore the image.

scp fileserver:$BASEDIR/$1.bootsect /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 if test $? != 0 then echo “Error, no such image: $1” exit 1 fi echo “Restoring partition table” ssh fileserver “cat $BASEDIR/$1.parttable” | sfdisk -f /dev/sda echo “Restoring MBR” ssh fileserver “cat $BASEDIR/$1.bootsect” > /dev/sda echo “Restoring partition 1” ssh fileserver “cat $BASEDIR/$1.sda1.gz” | gzip -cd > /dev/sda1 echo “Restoring partition 2” ssh fileserver “cat $BASEDIR/$1.sda2.gz” | gunzip -c | ntfsclone –restore-image –overwrite /dev/sda2 - echo “Restoring partition 3” ssh fileserver “cat $BASEDIR/$1.sda3.gz” | gunzip -c | ntfsclone –restore-image –overwrite /dev/sda3 -

Using the script I restored the image.

And, surprise, surprise, the system actually booted Windows 7! Although the system behaves like a fresh install (you have to enter user settings, product code, accept license etc), everything is still there. So no reinstalling software etc.