Can I restore an image from a Surface pro 4 to a laptop?

[badamsiosllc]

Hello, Y'all!

My wife's Surface Pro 4, finally gave out.

As recently as Tuesday, I made a full backup, which I just attempted to install only a laptop, and it said it could not find a drive.

Please tell me I have to make a bios change? We're on a fixed income!

TIA!

[TeraByte Support]

what said it couldn't find a drive? What was the exact message? Where did it occur, etc..

[badamsiosllc]

Wow, didn't realize how long ago I posted this! I often forget to subscribe, so I think no one responded. Silly, since y'all are very responsive.

I've been trying other methods, like todo transfer, it's supposed to transfer all apps, settings, passwords...etc. Not a high priority, she uses mine... Just had to create her own account, and all that. Now she wants a laptop back. Seems I'm always in the way?

Anyway, after restoring the image successfully, when I start the new laptop, the BIOS says, "Intel Boot agent," and starts searching for the PXE, then says PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent, then says No boot device found. Press any key to continue.

[OldNavyGuy]

Sounds like the boot partition was trashed...one of many problems that can happen when attempting to restore to different hardware.

There may be other corrruption issues, so IMO the best thing going forward would be to do a "clean install" of Windows on the new laptop.

Then, reinstall IFW and make a drive image you can go back to.

Use TBIView to access the data in her User Profile (C:\Users\HerUserName) on the backup image.

From there you can copy that data to her new user profile on the new laptop.

NOTE: You should not restore the NTUSER.DAT file, nor the AppData folder in her "backed up" User Profile.

Then, re-install all of her apps.

[TeraByte Support]

That can occur if restoring in MBR/EMBR system and no activate partition exists.

You should backup and restore the entire drive - if you are just restoring partitions, you have to ensure you have both the boot and OS partition, restore the boot partition first with "set active" and install standard mbr , restore the so second with that option disabled but "update boot partition" enabled.

[OldNavyGuy]

That can occur if restoring in MBR/EMBR system and no activate partition exists.

You should backup and restore the entire drive - if you are just restoring partitions, you have to ensure you have both the boot and OS partition, restore the boot partition first with "set active" and install standard mbr , restore the so second with that option disabled but "update boot partition" enabled.

The boot partition is one problem...

The OP is moving to different hardware.

"Can I restore an image from a Surface pro 4 to a laptop?"

There will probably be machine-specific configs for the Surface Pro on the image that will fail when restored to the new laptop.

It might boot, but Windows could likely be unstable...either right away, or down the road...no one knows.

The time sink to debug those kinds of issues would be significant.

IMO, the clean install method would be safer.

[TeraByte Support]

Modern Surface would be a UEFI system, user would have to ensure it's coming from a UEFI system, if not, restore entire drive, then run CHGDTYPE.TBS script to convert it to GPT and setup for booting.

[badamsiosllc]

Thanks, TeraByte Support, person.

Actually, after reading this, all I had to do was to change the boot order from legacy to UEFI, and she fired right up!