I am trying to clone a Windows 7 Install from one machine to others, in a computer lab situation. I have used clonezilla to make an image of the machine's harddrive and then attempted to write that image to a second machine's disk. Everything went fine, but when I try to boot Windows 7 on the second machine I get a blue screen flash and then it tries to run the startup repair tool, which runs unsuccessfully. Is there something new with Windows 7 that keeps it from being cloned like this?
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You can create a WIM of your installation using ImageX, start up in that image and use sysprep /generalize for deployment on the new machine. You'll need to install drivers and activate windows when you deploy to the new machine.
If you want to setup a new user account and machine name on the new system, add the /oobe flag when you sysprep.
Steven Evers
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I would only do a perfect "clone" if the machines' hardware is identical in every way. And even then, you need to be really careful!
If the machines are different at all, I would expect a bluescreen on startup due to the low-level drivers being different. You should follow snorfys answer and do a sysprep install instead of a clone:
http://theitbros.com/sysprep-a-windows-7-machine-start-to-finish-v2/
Jeff Atwood
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As far as I know, windows has been this way since XP or earlier. You can only use windows on the hard drive that it was originally installed on. I think they use a serial number or something that is specific to that disk to prevent duplication.
While a lot of don't like M$, this is illegal, and I'm not even sure this kind of question is allowed on this site.
bradlis7
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