Can I recover to a replacement PC?

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  Assuming you mean that you would like to do a bare metal restore of the entire laptop, probably not without a a lot of pain. Restoring the files is not the problem; as long as the hard drive is large enough (it should be at least as large as the drive in the old laptop) you should be okay.
  
  However, Windows Home Server wasn't designed for a migration scenario; restoring to different hardware usually means that you need a completely new set of drivers, and Windows Home Server won't substitute new drivers. Best case is that you will be able to boot and substitute drivers in Windows; that's pretty unlikely, though. Normally you need to replace most/all drivers, and Windows bluescreens when you try to boot until you've got most of the new drivers in place.
  
  My recommendation is to not try it, to be honest. Restore your data files via the sinngle file restore functionallity, yes, but don't ry to restore the entire machine.
  

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  I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)

  • Proposed as answer by kariya21Moderator Saturday, March 14, 2009 4:11 PM

  Saturday, March 14, 2009 1:58 PM

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  Hi,
  as Ken said, restoring to different hardware may or may not function.
  With purchasing hardware, which meets some points, you can improve your chances in a migration scenario.
  Good chances you may have, if the hardware is similar to the original, i.e. CPU family and chipset. Also the disk controller should be configured identical (i.e. if the SATA controller was configured in IDE mode before or the disk was an IDE drive, the new machine should have the same configuration.
  But even if the system boots, usually product activation will kick in.
  Best greetings from Germany
  Olaf

  Saturday, March 14, 2009 9:57 PM

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  Thanks Ken and Olaf-
  I understand about the hardware compaitibility issues and see how restoring files would work.
  
  What about installed software (I use Quicken for example)? Can I restore the registry settings associated with the programs, or do I have to reinstall?

  Monday, March 16, 2009 10:49 AM
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  If you are not going to try to use Windows Home Server as a migration tool (and I recommend against doing so for the reasons I stated above) then you will have to reinstall all your software. I suggest you look on this as a golden opportunity to abandon any software you don't use any more. :)

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  I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)

  Monday, March 16, 2009 11:49 AM

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  Restoring with the Windows Home Server recovery process will restore the OS with all applications, so if the OS boots successfully, your applications will also be up and running (as long as they dont have an own check for the hardware and request to be reactivated).
  It would be possible, to access registry keys from the backed up registry as well to export and import keys, but this process is not very intuitive and will often fail due to the non standardized behavior of many applications. So in this case it is usually better to reinstall the applications.
  Best greetings from Germany
  Olaf

  Monday, March 16, 2009 2:15 PM

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  Got it. Sounds like the safest steps are:
  
  1. Get the new Laptop
  2. Install the software
  3. Recover files
  
  Since the old laptop is dead, I couldn't use the windows migration tool.
  
  Thanks.

  • Marked as answer by edinpgh Monday, March 16, 2009 5:11 PM

  Monday, March 16, 2009 5:11 PM
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  In your scenario, allow some additional hints:
  Do not delete the old machine from the console (you can right click and disable backups for it to avoid all the warning messages).
  Give the new machine a different name.
  Best greetings from Germany
  Olaf

  Monday, March 16, 2009 7:31 PM

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