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AIK for Win XP Home Edition with SP3?

CJECJE
edited September 2014 in AOMEI Products Support

Hello!

I need to know for sure which AIK (the XP with sp2 version or the Vista version) to use with Windows XP Home Edition with sp3 installed. I dont see XP with sp3 as a download option on microsofts site.

Thanks in advance for anyone's help.

Comments

  • adminadmin

    Hello CJE,


    Thank you for posting your qustion in this forum. You can download the AIK at this link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5753 it is compatiable with XP sp3.

  • CJECJE

    Thank you for the quick reply.image

    CJE

  • adminadmin

    It's our pleasureimage

  • CJECJE

    The AIK is new to me.

    QUESTION:  Once I install the AIK (the version you suggested), does the AIK ONLY come into play when booting from a bootable USB thumb drive for the purpose of Restore -or- after AIK is installed, is the AIK active and used anytime the PC is "restarted" from the normal C: drive without the thumb drive connected? (I don't want to possibly crash or affect the normal Windows booting process from the C: drive for everyday operations with the AIK installed and the thumbdrive removed.)

    Thanks!

     

  • darylsonnierdarylsonnier

    The AIK is only active when you either use a program from it on your PC or use the files that were needed to create the bootable environment for your thumb drive.  The AIK is the Automated Installation Kit.  It includes the tools/files necessary to create a bootable Windows PE (preinstallation environment).  I could go into more detail, but it would likely be confusing.  Windows Vista and later include files that make creating a PE very simple in comparison, but given you're running Windows XP SP3 none of that infrastructure is built in, hence the need for the AIK. 

  • CJECJE

    Thank you for your time and quick response. I simply didn't want AIK to interfere with what is "working" system. I have installed the AIK from a DVD as instructed with NO problems and I am currenty running a SYSTEM BACKUP with AOMEI and will do incremental backups after this first important step.

    I am backing up to an external WD hard drive. I am confident at this point that the now bootable thumb drive will get AOMEI up and running if and when needed for a restore to a new drive.

    If I may ask another question. If this hardrive should crash, are there any concerns on restoring the "system" onto a new larger capacity hard drive. In other words do I need to pay attention to the new drive's formatting type regardless of the original drives format type from which the backup files came? There is only one hard drive in the PC and C: drive only has a single partition so its pretty straight forward I should think. This is a 4 year old Emachine PC with upgraded memory only. I know that sooner or later the drive or MB is going to bite the dust.

    Thanks again for any help with this question!

  • darylsonnierdarylsonnier

    CJE,


    You're welcome.  There are a few considerations when moving to a larger drive, but they're simple enough.  If your drive is no larger than two GB, you'd likely need to do nothing more than check the properties for the restore to expand to fill the entire drive.  You will do this by clicking the Edit Partitions button on the Restore tab once you've selected your source image and destination location.  The default option is to copy without resizing the partitions.  You'll want to choose fit all partitions to entire disk or manually edit your partitions.  The following link explains the partition table types better.  Granted, if your machine's four years old I suspect it's not running Windows 8 and possibly not 7 either, so I'd stick with the format type already in use and just expand the partition to fill the new drive.  If you're not using UEFI boot with Windows 7 or 8, I'd recommend not getting a drive larger than 2 TB.


    http://www.aomeitech.com/forum/discussion/508/mbr-vs-gpt-which-should-i-choose#Item_3

  • CJECJE

    Got it. Thanks. It's XP Home with sp3. It's a 500 GB in there now. I would move to a 1 TB. I believe (I haven't checked yet) that the drive in the PC right now is formated in FAT32. If so, can I restore my System Backup from the FAT32 with AOMEI to a new drive formatted in NTSF and still have a working full system restore? 

    BTW, I have not ever received this level of tech support from ANY company or rep... even with paid support. You ROCK!

    Thanks again! (Last post from me on this, I promise.) image

  • darylsonnierdarylsonnier

    CJE,


    Thank you for the compliment.  Ask as many questions as it takes to get your problem resolved.  None of the moderators here are paid or even employees of Aomei.  We help out because we can.  To answer your question, when you restore the image, the file system will be converted to match the image type.  I'm not aware of any way to override that, so if anyone else knows a way please speak up.  I will, however, look into it.  One thing that you defintely should have no problem with is to restore your image in FAT32 as it stands, then use Aomei Partition Assistant to convert the file system to NTFS once you've completed the image restoration.

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