Copying entire drive of a PC

[Aegypticus]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

What exactly are you doing? Just use remote desktop. That works very well.

The Microsoft one? How is it over a wired network? Last time I tried it was over the Internet from Phoenix to Calgary and it had terrible quality and latency, but I can totally see that being from not having enough bandwidth to handle it well. I just want to be able to quickly swap back and forth between the old computer and the new on my main keyboard, mouse and monitor without wanting to tear my hair out.

[Hack&Lube]

Over your home LAN it is almost like you are directly on it. There's no way you could do it from Phoenix to Calgary unless it was over your company's WAN or VPN tunnel. Just make a new RDP window the resolution of a secondary monitor and full screen your old PC onto it. You can even copy/paste back and forth between the two. It's just like your other computer is part of your desktop.

[Aegypticus]

Yeah, you're right, it wasn't the Microsoft Remote Desktop, that was something I was trying at the time but I remember now it didn't actually work. It was team viewer that sucked from Phoenix iirc.

I'll try the built-in one. Do you know how I set up the credentials or whatever to login? I found surprisingly little relevant info on that.

Funny story, but I had a hell of a time getting the old computer on the same homegroup as my new one. It kept telling me the password was wrong. I thought I was losing my mind because I literally changed the password to something really simple on my main monitor, then looked 2 feet to the right and typed the same thing into the second one I have set up temporarily. Wrong password every time. Well, turns out, Windows won't let computers on the same homegroup if they don't have the same time and date set, and since the old computer has a dead battery, it was set for some time in 2001. Would be nice if they told you that was the problem rather than making me question my sanity.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Aegypticus

Yeah, you're right, it wasn't the Microsoft Remote Desktop, that was something I was trying at the time but I remember now it didn't actually work. It was team viewer that sucked from Phoenix iirc.

I'll try the built-in one. Do you know how I set up the credentials or whatever to login? I found surprisingly little relevant info on that.

Funny story, but I had a hell of a time getting the old computer on the same homegroup as my new one. It kept telling me the password was wrong. I thought I was losing my mind because I literally changed the password to something really simple on my main monitor, then looked 2 feet to the right and typed the same thing into the second one I have set up temporarily. Wrong password every time. Well, turns out, Windows won't let computers on the same homegroup if they don't have the same time and date set, and since the old computer has a dead battery, it was set for some time in 2001. Would be nice if they told you that was the problem rather than making me question my sanity.

Home groups never worked properly and there is zero need to use it. Computers don't need to be on the same home group and I never use it.

As explained earlier, the credentials for RDP are the same as drive mapping. As long as you are on the same network and you can ping the other PC it will work. You might need to enable RDP on it. Go to start and type "allow remote access to your computer" to go to the option or go to System Properties (right click on My Computer, properties - or Windows-Break on your keyboard) and to the remote tab. Select "Allow remote connections from computers running any version of remote desktop".

User is in domain\username format. For this, the domain will be the NETBIOS name of your old PC.
"old-PC-NETBIOS-name\Your-User-Account-On-Your-Old-PC".

Password:
"Password on old PC for that account"

[Aegypticus]

I appreciate the help. I used the homegroup as an easy way to share a folder for transferring files, but sounds like if I use the Remote Desktop there will be no need for that. I was unaware of the need to append the computer name to the front of the login. I'll give that a try.

Last night is literally the first time I've ever successfully used the Windows homegroup, or any other built in networking for that matter. Truth be told, I just seem to have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around networking in general, but I'm going to have to learn if I want to do some of the stuff I'm planning for my home network. Right now it consists of a wired gigabit network of computers that don't talk to each other at all.