> > Last night I wiped the machine and started again ... but with the XPsp1
> > disk rater than an sp2 disk that had been put in the file obviously by
> > mistake. Everything ran smoothly and a surprising 4 hours later ( it
> > normally takes longer from sp1 ) I have a fully functional machine
> again!
> >
> > So make sure you keep the right disk with your older windows license
> > keys!

> and install xp only in a virtual machine container like virtualbox/kvm

Another option is to use bare-metal restore/migration software which allows for a restore to be done to a different target machine -- Make one master system/config, create a backup and then restore to hardware as required.


Sean