Is it possible to overwrite XP with XP himself

I have a little problem to solve. Maybe some one of your experts can help me. This is the little(big) problem. I purchased an old HP ZE5200 from Ebay with Windows XP SP3 pre installed and it worked fine. I made also a backup with ntbackup including the system state. After that, I have changed a lot of things the last weeks because i want to install the Emagic EMI26 and have broken the OS. So I made a new install from my own WINXP CD with new partitions. Now i want to replace the installation with the old backup file *.bkf. But i am not sure if i can just overwrite the whole system with my old backup file, to have my old good system back. Is it possible to just restore the file back, because the pre installed OS from before was an adapted version for this HP an other then my from CD and the os. I thank you in forward and i really will be happy if there is a good chance to get working my good old OS from before with all the settings from before. Also because all drivers from the HP are in the backup file.

 

you need to clarify backup versus image, backup will not restore a system, it will only restore data, (depending on your program), an image will restore a system to an exact replica.

 

thanks for answering

Unfortunately, I have not made an image of the system. I always thought a system backup suffice, since I had seen the System State option, I was convinced NTBackup would handle it properly. I'm still convinced that I can write the files from my old backup over the newly installed XP. The only question is how and with what risk. As info, the backup contains the boot.ini and two other important system files, that means I have a good chance already.

I have extracted now the old backup with all matching HP-drivers including the system state files from back to a different Partition, so the system is phisically existent now. What i must do as next?

 

https://www.sysinfotools.com/blog/backup-windows-xp-files-using-ntbackup/

above has instructions and a link to install backup from an external drive or partition, I cannot give much more information as I have never personally used ntbackup. I always copy my data only, all my programs I reinstall. hope this helps

 

i let you know if i found a solution to get back my old installation to c: . Maybe i use to start windows me from a floppy disk and then make the partition d: active. so the computer starts from this partition. I think this work must be done really rigorous.

 

you can use command prompt to fixmbr and then fixboot, disregard any warnings and just say yes. you will probably have to use a separate program to delete any partition that is other than xp, then merge the partitions or at least the c: and d: drives together.

 

oh many thanks for this precious tip, i will try it tomorrow and let you know if it works. thanks again

 

okay