laptop has vista can I restore from XP??

I just bought a new laptop that has Vista. I am having problems loading software including True Image 9.0. Can I format the hard drive and use my recovery disk to boot, and restore my last image from my old laptop?

 

True Image version 10 is the first version that will install on Vista. But the ver. 9 Rescue CD will do the basic Backup, Recovery, and Clone functions on a Vista system.
To restore an Image from one computer to another requires the use of Workstation and its add-on called Universal Restore.
There is an alternative, which may or may not work for you. On the old computer, before you make the Image, change the display adapter to Standard VGA. Then make the Image and do the Restore to the new computer - neither Workstation nor UR needed.

 

So if I do a restore on my laptop that has vista, and the restore file is from a computer with xp, will the laptop then have XP on it? does this work?

 

If you are asking whether you can convert your new Vista machine into an XP machine vial your backup restore, the answer is probably not--unless you were to buy the business versin which has the universal restore feature.

Your new machine does not use the same drivers nor has the same hardware so you are comparing apples to oranges. Yes, it can probably be done but not very easily.

 

XP drivers for that Vista laptop could be a problem. Go to the makers website and see if they offer XP drivers for that model laptop. If they do then you have a good chance of getting XP on it from the Image made on the other laptop by doing the display adapter change I mentioned above.

 

It's not a good idea to copy any OS image to another PC or laptop with different hardware and chipsets etc.
The drivers will not be installed on your XP image for the other laptop.

 

Thedis being restored doesn't care what Os is running the program that does the restore. On an ATI boodCD it happens to be linux. If you made a BartPE disk, it would be xp; IF you made a VistaPE disk, it would be Vista. No matter. What gets restored is whatever was backed up. So, if you backup up a Vista system disk, that's what would be written on to the disk to which you restore.

Now, if you want to change the OS on your system disk, that's a whole diff animal as other have pointed out. Best bet there is to backup your data, install new OS (thereby erasing whatever is on the disk, reinstall progs, then copy back your data files (docs, spreadsheets, etc)

 

Upgrade to TI 10 or 11 for Vista. See if others have defined what the issues are with your software problems. Maybe right click on the installer file and try installing them as an Administrator first, if this fails try XP mode.

It is only a matter of time before Vista is the standard, sorry but true. It took me a while to get use to it, but now I feel more comfortable with Vista than XP. I find it intuitive, and I love Start Search. In fact, several programs run much better on Vista than XP. I have 30 programs installed on my Vista machine and 20 of them were just moved over from XP.

 

In addition to the technical issues identified in this thread, it is likely that the OS license associated with your old laptop is tied to that laptop and is thus not legally transferable to a different PC / laptop. This is usually the case with name-brand laptops with the OS provided and pre-installed by the manufacturer; check your OS license.

Doug