# Free alternative to PC Mover?



## PC person (Feb 2, 2006)

I have bought Laplink PC mover Ultimate, but there are a few problems with it. The boxed version I have that I have bought, gives me one license to transfer everything (or anything- part of it) from one computer to another. It also has a feature to transfer things from a mounted hard drive image.

The thing is, if you want to transfer to another computer, you will have to buy a new license, which we all eventually get. Is there an alternative that is free and you can transfer to/from as many devices as you want? And, one that lets you selectively move things, not just moves everything, but let's choose between all or just some things.

I want to do two things. 

First, as you can see if this thread, post 52

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f100/redirect-virus-as-well-586788-3.html

My laptop (the one I'm using now- listed under My System) is quite messed up the way it is. I do plan to reformat and reinstall windows now that I have the Windows XP Professional Recovery Disc, but before I do so, as I have already done (Yesterday, I make a new backup when my old PC backup become older to keep it recent) I used Acronis WD edition to make an image of my entire internal hard drive, a 209GB TIB file.

I figured what I'd do is mount it with Acronis WD edition, then use Laplink PC mover to selectively move what I want from the image back to my hard drive after I have reinstalled Windows. I can't just put everything back, that would be recreating the problems I have now. I'm not sure what I shouldn't put back though, but I'd have the whole hard drive image if I wanted to put anything back it would be there- nothing lost

I can't seem to mount the image though with Acronis WD edition. It is a 209GB file, consisting of two partitions from the current drive which are 

1. Partition E: a FAT 16 partition 1.998 GB's

2. Partition F: my main hard drive partition, an NTFS 296.1GB partition

When trying to mount the image I get an where it first says it's trying to assign drive letters to partitions, then I get an error saying it can not assign a drive letter to partition from the backup archive.

Second:

I want to transfer programs from my old to my new desktop computer. Again, it would be a lot easier, just to connect my external hard drive, via USB, mount the image then use Laplink to transfer what I want to the new computer. The new computer has Windows 7 Professional, this one has Windows XP Professional. Laplink also has it's own version of a disc image tool, but the version to make a disc to boot from the BIOS to make it is not free.


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## PC person (Feb 2, 2006)

Well, I haven't found a free alternative, but I did find out that when transferring from an image with PC Mover Ultimate, it will only work with .vhd files. I downloaded a program called disk2vhd but I get a problem when I try to make the image, specifically

"Error Snapshotting Volumes"

This is what is under event viewer for it



> Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error creating the Shadow Copy Provider COM class with CLSID {65ee1dba-8ff4-4a58-ac1c-3470ee2f376a} [0x8007041d].
> 
> For more information, see Help and Support Center at Events and Errors Message Center: Basic Search.


I found sort of a semi fix here to use this script vssreset.bat

http://www.2brightsparks.com/assets/software/vssreset.bat

I'm not sure how to install it, it's all text.

Or, if anyone knows another free program that can make .vhd files


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