Speed up a cheap computer

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General Zod
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by General Zod »

Chances are you copied over driver installations for the other machine that just aren't compatible with the new one when you cloned it, and it's making it go crosseyed.
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Executor32 »

Shit, I missed that entirely. This whole time I thought he was cloning this machine's current drive over to new one, not cloning another computer's drive and putting it in this one. *self-facepalm*

Now that I know that, Korto, there is an easy method to get this clone to work. Windows has a built-in tool called sysprep that will strip out all drivers and other unique system information and reset the 'out-of-box experience' , but still keep all your installed programs and the stuff in your user profile. It's meant for system builders like Dell, etc. to create system images they then write to all the computers they build, but it also works perfectly for what you were trying to do. If you're still interested, I can detail the instructions for you. It's much simpler than all that command prompt stuff we were doing, especially if you haven't wiped that 160 GB drive yet.
どうして?お前が夜に自身お触れるから。
Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting Master of Darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil,
but a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow
was struck, I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future, where my evil is law! Now, the fool
seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku...
-Aku, Master of Masters, Deliverer of Darkness, Shogun of Sorrow
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Korto »

Yep, no worries. Had a sleep, got away from it for a bit, feel happy to give it another go.

It's a bit gratifying, actually, because when I woke up this morning the thought struck me..."You know, I wonder if the bootup is computer-specific, and not just some generic standardised commands that all computers recognise. That might mean the boot commands it's being given are wrong, and all the recopying isn't going to help shit. I really should ask about that."
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Executor32 »

First thing's first, if you haven't wiped the 160 GB drive yet, then you can get right down to business. If you already have, you'll need to clone it again first. Either way, you'll then need to hook it up to your wife's computer, disconnect her drive, and boot it up.

Once Windows is loaded, go to C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep and run sysprep.exe. Under System Cleanup Action, it should already say 'Enter Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)', if not then select it. Make sure the Generalize checkbox is checked, and select Shutdown instead Reboot under Shutdown options. Finally, click OK to start the sysprep process.

After the computer shuts down, you can then unhook the 160 GB drive and reconnect your wife's. Mount the 160 GB drive back in your son's computer, then boot it up. Since all the drivers for your wife's hardware were removed and the hardware profile was generalized, it should boot up without issue. It'll go through the whole Out-of-Box Experience, though, as if you were installing Windows from scratch. When it gets to the point where you create a user account, just create a temporary one, we'll be deleting it later as any user accounts that were on your wife's machine will still be intact.

Once you finish the OOBE and are at the desktop, you can log out of the temporary account you created and log into your wife's account, then go to User Accounts in the Control Panel and delete the temporary account. Finally, install drivers for everything and activate Windows using your son's product key, and you're done.
どうして?お前が夜に自身お触れるから。
Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting Master of Darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil,
but a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow
was struck, I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future, where my evil is law! Now, the fool
seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku...
-Aku, Master of Masters, Deliverer of Darkness, Shogun of Sorrow
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Korto »

Taken me a bit of time to give that thing another go--school holidays getting in the way, but the bunch of them pissed off today and gave me some free time.

No dice, I'm afraid. I set it going as described. First message was "Processing cleanup phase sysprep plug ins", and the next message after a minute or so of that was "Fatal error".
No error code, or any log I could see.

I will mention that the 100meg system partition is described as Drive D:, when before it was cloned it was just "System Reserved", without a drive letter. No idea if that's pertinent.
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Executor32 »

There are a number of things that can cause that, but luckily there actually is a log. Check in C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\Panther\, there should be a setuperr.log file there. In the unlikely event that it's not there, it could also be in C:\Windows\Panther\ or C:\Windows\Panther\UnattendGC\. Post the contents here, and I should be able to narrow down what's tripping up the process.
どうして?お前が夜に自身お触れるから。
Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting Master of Darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil,
but a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow
was struck, I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future, where my evil is law! Now, the fool
seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku...
-Aku, Master of Masters, Deliverer of Darkness, Shogun of Sorrow
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Korto »

Here we go (ahh, a txt file. That's nice). It should be noted that I re-tried it a few times, along with "switching it off and switching it back on again", just in case.
I've seperated the tries out. They all seem the same, anyway, which is good.
2016-09-30 11:49:54, Error [0x0f0082] SYSPRP LaunchDll:Failure occurred while executing 'drmv2clt.dll,Sysprep', returned error code -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 11:49:54, Error [0x0f0070] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs, halting sysprep execution. dwRet = -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 11:49:54, Error [0x0f00a8] SYSPRP WinMain:Hit failure while processing sysprep cleanup providers; hr = 0x80070020[gle=0x00000020]


2016-09-30 11:55:05, Error [0x0f0082] SYSPRP LaunchDll:Failure occurred while executing 'drmv2clt.dll,Sysprep', returned error code -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 11:55:05, Error [0x0f0070] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs, halting sysprep execution. dwRet = -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 11:55:05, Error [0x0f00a8] SYSPRP WinMain:Hit failure while processing sysprep cleanup providers; hr = 0x80070020[gle=0x00000020]


2016-09-30 12:04:11, Error [0x0f0082] SYSPRP LaunchDll:Failure occurred while executing 'drmv2clt.dll,Sysprep', returned error code -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 12:04:11, Error [0x0f0070] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs, halting sysprep execution. dwRet = -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 12:04:11, Error [0x0f00a8] SYSPRP WinMain:Hit failure while processing sysprep cleanup providers; hr = 0x80070020[gle=0x00000020]


2016-09-30 12:07:13, Error [0x0f0082] SYSPRP LaunchDll:Failure occurred while executing 'drmv2clt.dll,Sysprep', returned error code -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 12:07:13, Error [0x0f0070] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs, halting sysprep execution. dwRet = -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 12:07:13, Error [0x0f00a8] SYSPRP WinMain:Hit failure while processing sysprep cleanup providers; hr = 0x80070020[gle=0x00000020]


2016-09-30 12:37:58, Error [0x0f0082] SYSPRP LaunchDll:Failure occurred while executing 'drmv2clt.dll,Sysprep', returned error code -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 12:37:58, Error [0x0f0070] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs, halting sysprep execution. dwRet = -2147024864[gle=0x00000020]
2016-09-30 12:37:58, Error [0x0f00a8] SYSPRP WinMain:Hit failure while processing sysprep cleanup providers; hr = 0x80070020[gle=0x00000020]
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Executor32 »

Good, I was hoping for this one, it's actually really easy to fix. Before running sysprep, hit Win+R to open the Run dialog, then type services.msc and hit Enter or click OK. Find "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service" in the list and double-click it. Change the startup type to Disabled, click OK, and reboot the computer. Then, try running sysprep again according to my previous instructions, and it should complete this time.
どうして?お前が夜に自身お触れるから。
Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting Master of Darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil,
but a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow
was struck, I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future, where my evil is law! Now, the fool
seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku...
-Aku, Master of Masters, Deliverer of Darkness, Shogun of Sorrow
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Korto »

Happy dance! Happy Dance! Happy happy happy dance!

Thank fuck for that. And thank you, Executor. It's in and running.

The End
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Executor32 »

Image

But seriously, you're quite welcome. Solving stuff like this always puts a big smile on my face. :D
どうして?お前が夜に自身お触れるから。
Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting Master of Darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil,
but a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow
was struck, I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future, where my evil is law! Now, the fool
seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku...
-Aku, Master of Masters, Deliverer of Darkness, Shogun of Sorrow
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Korto »

Because every good story deserves a sequel!

I'm resurrecting this thread because a closely related problem has just arisen.
Basically, the wife's computer has just died. Probably related to the dodgy power-button. She reckons it gave a message about shutting down due to a surge, and now it won't switch on and doesn't even have the little LED that shone around the back.

Anyway, some time ago I bought a cheap secondhand dell computer, without a hard-drive. So, I figure pull the hard drive out of the wife's computer, it should still be good, put it in the new one, and if I can convince it to go, then she doesn't lose all her stuff and set-up.

Of course, it doesn't want to go, since it's all different hardware.

Assets
Her HDD, with Win 7 Pro on it
Her new Dell computer, with no HDD
A product key
A Win 7 installation disk
A free bay in my computer to put her drive in temporarily


Can it be made to work?
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Zaune »

Don't see why not as long as the product key is valid...

EDIT: WAit a sec. You are planning to get all her saved documents, photos etc off before plugging the hard drive into the new machine, right?
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Re: Speed up a cheap computer

Post by Jub »

Yeah, you can easily make that work.

Just copy all of her files to your drive, assuming you have the space to do so, then wipe the drive. Drop the clean drive into her new PC, toss window 7 on a usb stick, and that PC should work. Then transfer files via your lan or pop the drive back into your PC to copy stuff back over.
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