While theoretically possible, restoring an NT machines registry to another
machine is risky so matter identical the hardware seems to be. Any slight
difference between the two machines as far as system board, cpu type,
differences in peripherals, etc. may cause NT not to start or prevent users
from logging in.  In addition to this, any installed software may not run
correctly if the disk partitions on the new machine are set-up exactly the same
as the backed up machine. I've heard that Microsoft is contemplating providing
some sort of registry "cloning" tools which would have the ability to extract
non-hardware specific information from registry which could be imported safely
to another machine, but I don't have any specific details. From an ADSM
perspective, as long as the NT machine name and system partition location
(drive letter) are the same as the machine which was backed up the registry
restore will work (and of course we always save a copy of the currently active
registry before placing a restored registry on-line, but if the restored
registry causes the machine not to start you will have to boot another os which
can read the system partition in order to bring back the saved copy).


Pete Tanenhaus
ADSM NT Client Development