Moving a Linux install is easy

One of the awesome things about Linux was always, that it’s so incredibly easy to move your stuff to another machine – just stick the drive in another computer and it boots right up; if you do this directly with Windows, it will probably blow up in your face. Installing everything from scratch takes forever and generally sucks.

Windows can do this too, but with some more work

So, if you’re a Dell or a Toshiba or a Lenovo, here’s how you operate – you have a lot of different machines you’re trying to sell, but you don’t want to maintain an OS image for every one. OEMs didn’t like this, so they asked MS to help out, and Microsoft gave them Sysprep.

One of the main features of Sysprep is called “generalize”, where we’ll keep the installed stuff, but “forget” everything about the specific hardware of the machine. The next boot, Windows will go through the same process as when it was first installed, and reinstall everything.

This is where you come in, intrepid reader

So basically, you need to download the Windows Automated Installation Kit for Win7. Update: Apparently this tool comes in-box, no download needed! This gives you Sysprep (and ImageX, which is an interesting tool itself). Then, run the following magic command:

Windows shuts down, and then you move the drive to another computer.

Moving a VM to a Native Boot-to-VHD

The same trick is also how you can take a VHD image of a machine and run it using Windows’s “Native VHD boot” feature. You know, where you can take a VHD and just run it, on your machine, full speed. Awesome. While it’s a VM, Sysprep it, then boot from it – you won’t have any of the STOP 0×7F problems that you might have if you ran it natively, and you just saved yourself a ton of time versus waiting for Windows to install.