Migrating a Bootcamp Partition with Winclone

Overview

Using Winclone to create and restore an image of the Boot Camp partition is a relatively simple operation
when using the same Mac hardware. But what about moving Boot Camp to different Mac hardware? And
what about upgrading the hard drive on the same Mac? That can also be done in a relatively simple
process, but there are crucial preparatory steps that must be taken to ensure that Windows will boot
properly. Windows requires device drivers that are appropriate to the host machine, particularly display
drivers, or it will crash (blue screen of death) the first time it starts up on on new hardware. This tutorial
explains how to migrate the Boot Camp partition to different hardware without crashing or necessitating a
full reinstall of Windows.

What will you need: Sysprep - The migration process uses a utility built into the Windows operating
system called Sysprep. Sysprep removes device drivers (called "generalizing") in order to reuse a Windows
operating system on other computers. It also removes license keys for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft
Office, so the valid license keys will be required when setting up Windows after the migration.

USB flash drive - Windows device drivers will be downloaded fom Apple and stored on an external drive
(which can also be burned to CD/DVD) and stored on a DOS FAT32-formatted external drive with at least
1GB of available space.

Summary of steps in this tutorial:

1. Run Sysprep in Windows
2. Create Winclone image of Boot Camp partition
3. Create Boot Camp partition on new hardware
4. Restore Winclone image to new Boot Camp partition
5. Download Boot Camp Drivers in Boot Camp Assistant
6. Install Boot Camp drivers on newly restored Windows operating system

Note: Although Winclone supports imaging of Windows XP in NTFS format, Apple stopped providing
Boot Camp drivers for Windows XP in the latest versions of OS X, so the recommendation is to use
Windows 7 or above as the source operating system for the Boot Camp migration.

Another Note: Use of third-party drivers that allow OS X to read to and write from Windows NTFS
should be disabled and/or removed before starting this process.

A Word about Backups

Running sysprep on your Boot Camp Windows installation will make changes to the Windows operating
system. Before you begin, make sure to have a good file based backup of all data on all partitions prior to
starting these steps. You may also want to create a "pre-Sysprep" Winclone image before starting this
process. Sysprep will not render your original Windows operating system unusable, but it will require re-
installing Boot Camp drivers and valid Windows license key afterwards, as mentioned above.

1. Locate the Sysprep program in Windows

Open Windows Explorer on Computer (C:) and enter "sysprep.exe" into the search field at the top right to
locate the Sysprep application. You may also navigate to C:\WIndows\System32\sysprep. Double-click on
Sysprep to start the program. The example below is from a Windows 7 system and should look similar on
Windows 8.

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2. Select Cleanup Action and Generalize option

The options for running sysprep are very simple. Select the "Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)
and make sure to check the Generalize checkbox. Generalize is what removes the device drivers from
Windows, so it's very important to ensure that this box is checked before continuing. In the Shutdown
options, do not select Reboot as you will not want Windows to restart again once sysprep is complete.

3. Sysprep processing

Sysprep will begin removing driver registrations and generalizing the operating system. The display may
flicker occasionally. Once sysprep is complete, Windows will shut down. Do not restart into Windows
again before the image is created. First reboot into OS X.

Addressing the "Fatal Error" message

Occasionally, Sysprep will not run to completion and abort with the following message "A fatal error
occurred while trying to Sysprep the machine". This error is due to a running process which must be shut
down before Sysprep can remove the file during the generalize process. This process is the WIndows
Media Player Network Sharing Service.

You may need to elevate to Administrator privileges to take this action. To turn off Windows Media Player
Network Sharing Service, click the Start button an in the Run box, type services.msc, which opens the
Services MMC Console. In the list of Services search for Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service,
right-click and click on Stop. Alternately, you may use the Command prompt (elevated to Administrator)
and type: net stop wmpnetworksvc.

Then run Sysprep again and it should complete the generalize process successfully.

4. Open Winclone

Launch Winclone, and your current Windows partition should appear in the Sources list.
5. Shrink File System

If you are going to be restoring Windows on a partition that is smaller than the current partition, make
sure to shrink the filesystem first. If not, skip to step 10.

To shrink the NTFS filesystem, control-click on the bootcamp volume and select Shrink Windows (NTFS)
Filesystem. Please note that shrinking the file system will not affect the file size of the resulting Winclone
image or modify the data. Shrinking Windows will only remove allocated space from the Windows file
system, allowing the Winclone image to be restored to the same size or smaller destination partitions.
6. Resize Confirmation

Verify that you want to shrink the file system.

7. Shrink Operation

The file system will be reduced to the smallest size possible.

8. Resize Progress

If you want to see the resizing progress, select Windows->Open Console Log.

9. Resize Verification

After the Boot Camp partition has been resized, you will see the new file system size. Note that this is the
smallest partition size available and you'll need a Boot Camp partition that is the same size or larger to
restore the filesystem.
10. Imaging the Boot Camp partition

You are now ready to create an image of the Boot Camp partition.

1. Select the Bootcamp partition. 2. Click Image

11. Click the Image button to proceed

12. Memory caches

Windows keeps a large file called a pagefile.sys on the Bootcamp partition. This file takes up a lot of space
and is recreated on startup, so it is generally recommended to select "Remove Memory Cache Files" when
creating the image. However, in special cases, for example when a drive is already failing or has corruption
on it, deleting files may cause issues. Select to Keep Cache Files or Remove Memory Cache Files.
13. Save Boot Camp image

Select a location to save the Winclone image. The image can be saved to the desktop, the Documents
folder or a secondary Mac-formatted storage drive. As this image will be used to restore on a different
Mac, the image needs to be moved or copied to a drive that will be accessible to the destination Mac
system.

14. Image Creation

The Winclone image will now be created. Depending on the size of your bootcamp partition, this may take
some time. You may choose to select from the Winclone file menu Window-> Open Console Log to follow
the progress of image creation.
15. Completion of Image Creation

Once the imaging process completes, you'll see a confirmation. This concludes the image creation portion
of the tutorial. The remaining steps are conducted on the destination Mac to which the image will be
restored.

16. Create new Windows partition

We will now manually create the Boot Camp partition on the destination Mac. On the destination Mac,
open Disk Utility and:
1. Select the drive.
2. Select the Partition tab
3. Click + to add a partition
4. Note: Make sure that the partition map scheme is a GUID Partition Table. If it is not, then you'll need to
repartition the entire drive and select GPT under Options in order to use Winclone to restore an image.
This is the standard partition scheme for Mac-created partition maps.

17. Set File System type

Format the new Boot Camp partition as MS-DOS (FAT). The file system will be changed to NTFS during
the Winclone image restoration process.
1. Select the new partition. 2. Set the format to MS-DOS (FAT)

18. Resize Partitions

You can now drag the divider between the partitions to set the size you would like of the Windows
partition and the Mac partition. Remember that the new Windows partition must be at least the size of the
imaged file system as described in Step 9 above. It is also a good practice to make the new partition larger
than the file system since there can be slight differences between how the size is calculated. If you chose
the Shrink Windows Filesystem option before imaging (step 5 above), be sure to create a partition at least
large enough to contain the file system, temporary cache files and your own file data.
19. Boot Camp partition name

Give the new partition a name to easily recognize it in Winclone.

20. Apply changes

Click Apply to resize the Mac partition and create a new Windows partition.
21. Verification

Disk Utility will verify that operations that it is performing. Make sure that the Boot Camp partition is
being added and the Mac partition is being resized. If this is correct, click Partition.
22. Restoring the Winclone image

Install Winclone on the destination Mac and launch. Attach the drive containing the Winclone image,
double click on the image and it will appear in the Sources column in Winclone. Then:

1. Select Image
2. Select Bootcamp partition
3. Click Restore
23. Verification

You will be asked if you want to restore. Verify that the correct partition is being restored to, and click
Restore.

24. Copy Boot File

In Windows Vista and Windows 7, Windows uses a boot file called BCD to determine which partition is
used to boot. Unless you specifically created a custom BCD configuration, select "Replace BCD".
25. Restoring Status

The restoration will start. It may take a while depending on the size of the image. You can see detailed
information on the progress by selecting Window->Show Console Log.

26. Completion and Startup Disk

Once restoration is complete, click OK. Because the restored image has had Sysprep run, the drivers will
not be installed yet. The next step will be to download Windows device drivers with Boot Camp Assistant.
27. Boot Camp Assistant - download drivers

Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Boot Camp Assistant and select "Download the latest Windows sypport
software from Apple" and click Continue. You will need a USB drive formatted as FAT32 with at least 1GB
of space available for downloading the Boot Camp drivers.

28. Save Boot Camp drivers to external drive

Attach a DOS (FAT32) formatted USB stick or external drive to your Mac and select "Save a copy to an
external drive". Click Continue.
29. Select download location for Boot Camp drivers

Select the DOS (FAT) drive and save. Click Continue.

30. Downloading Boot Camp drivers

Boot Camp Assistant will now begin downloading the drivers to the external drive. This may take some
time to complete.
31. Boot Camp drivers saved

Once the Boot Camp drivers have completed download, click Quit. Leave the USB drive attached to the
Mac and restart into Windows. You can do this in one of two ways:
1. Go to Apple Menu -> System Preferences, select Startup Disk and select the Boot Camp Windows
partition. Click Restart.
2. Restart the Mac. Hold the Option key while restarting. Select the Boot Camp Windows partition.
32. First Boot sequence in Windows

Now boot into Windows. You will notice that the system will initiate the CHKDSK process before booting.
This is expected behavior. Once CHKDSK completes, Windows will restart. It may take longer than usual
as Windows is in "discovery mode" and selects drivers for all detected devices. Do not be suprised if the
screen display flickers once and then appears at a low resolution. All driver-related anomalies will be
resolved by installing Boot Camp drivers, which we will get to shortly. Due to the Sysprep process run
previously, Windows will now present a prompt to create a new account. Simply create a new account
which will be removed later. Windows will display the new account as well as your existing user account.
Once logged in to your existing account, you may remove the temporary user account.

32. Locating Boot Camp drivers on USB drive

Once logged in to Windows, select the USB drive and locate the folder containing the Boot Camp drivers.
33. Run Setup to install Boot Camp drivers

Click setup (or setup.exe) to begin installing the device drivers.

34. Select Repair to install drivers

Select the Repair option to install the drivers.

35. Device driver installation

During the driver installation, the display may flicker occasionally.

36. Finish and reboot for driver installation to complete

Once the drivers are installed, click Finish and reboot into Windows again. You may need to configure
wireless input devices, display resolution and other settings. You may also need to re-enter license keys for
the Windows operating system and for Microsoft Office if it is installed.

37. Summary

At first glance, the process of moving Windows from one machine to another may appear to be a daunting
task. However, using the process outlined above will save many hours otherwise spent installing the
Windows operating system and programs, personalization settings and files from scratch. Using Winclone
with Sysprep is a powerful way to preserve your Boot Camp Windows environment when changing Mac
hardware.