Often the thought of having to migrate your Windows 2000 installation can be somewhat intimidating when you only consider the amount of things that have to be handled again. The reasons for doing this can be diverse, like:

• Migrate a working Windows 2000 operating system and your installed programs to a different or more powerful computer, preferably in minimal downtime.
• Possibly replace a small system/boot disk drive with a larger system/boot disk drive.
• Restore a Windows 2000 installation backup from a malfunctioning computer to a different computer for disaster recovery purposes.

With a little planning this undertaking does not have to bee all that involved.

Windows Backup (Ntbackup.exe) can handle differences in hardware configuration information between computers and maintain critical registry entries that are unique to the computer you are migrating onto. This capability means that you can migrate to new hardware by performing a full backup of the source computer and then restore that backup over a fresh installation of Windows 2000 on the destination computer.

Ntbackup.exe handles restore operations in the registry by first querying the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\KeysNotToRestore.

This registry key indicates to Ntbackup.exe that certain registry keys under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM key should not be overwritten when files are being restored.

An entry that ends with a backslash (\) indicates that a key is protected and that any keys or values under that key should not be restored.
If the entry ends with a backslash and an asterisk (\*), all subkeys are "merged".

In this situation, "merged" means comparing the start values of the keys in the backup set with the start values that exist in the current registry, to determine the correct key to restore.
If the value of the key on the backup set has a lower start value, the backup key takes precedence.
If the value of the key in the current registry has a lower start value, the current key takes precedence.
This process ensures that all services and devices start correctly after a "system state" restoration, even on dissimilar hardware.

Complete details on this are available on the Microsoft Support site at
How to Move a Windows 2000 Installation to Different Hardware (Q249694)