synching desktop with laptop ?

I have a mom-and-pop built desktop that is about two years old, running Win XP Home SP1 Build 2600. I also now have an HP ZD7010 laptop, also running Win XP Home SP1 Build 2600. I applied the updates to the desktop that had what was the relatively new XP OS at the time and was basically "raw ", but the laptop being fairly new, came with the SP1 updates in place. Point: although the two OS's are supposedly identical, they appear to be somewhat different "flavors" in many aspects, displaying differing functionality, and I have been told that this is quite normal given the origins of the two PCs and their OS's…

Ok, given that, what I would like to do is make the two pc's equivalent from an OS and software standpoint. I am wondering if it is feasible using NTBackup to do a system state backup, or whatever kind of a backup(s), of the desktop, and then restore that to the laptop. Has anyone actually done this? Without problems? Even if it has been done successfully, is there a chance that it could still be problematic?

Then, I would like to synch the two pc's periodically, basically to keep the laptop current in case of catastrophic failure of the desktop. I procured an ethernet "crossover cable" to bridge the two pc's, but have not yet been able to get that to work, even tho all instructions have been meticulously followed… I was also recently the beneficiary of a wireless router (802.11g, 54 MbPS) which, if I understand it correctly, would negate the need for the crossover cable to accomplish the transfer of data between the pc's. However, so far I have been unable to get that to work either, as it sounds like my ADSL ISP may be hosing that up, although I still have some other workaround measures to try out yet…

So, if the ntbackup is not viable, would Drive Image or one of those utils be the key? Which of the utils is best? Is there another way to synch the pc's that I am unaware of? Is the router faster than the crossover cable (100 Mbps?) for transferring/copying data?

 

Networking portion only.

Crossover cable will be faster than the wireless.

Suggestion for initial networking setup via the crossover cable:

• Make sure it is a crossover cable. Compare the two ends. If the wires all run directly thru (pin1 to pin1, pin2 to pin2, etc.) then it's a normal patch cable and can't connect two PCs.
• Set up NetBeui and get networking operating with it then switch to TCP/IP if you want to. NetBeui is much simpler and will at least let you know when you have a network. As follows:
• how-to NetBeui on XP
• Enable Client for Microsoft Networks on both.
• Enable File & Printer Sharing on both.
• Use the same workgroup name for both. No spaces. No characters except alpha-numerics and - or _ in the name.
• Different PC names. Same restrictions on the names.
• Set both NICs to 10Mbps half-Duplex (probably on Auto now). Once it's working you can change both to 100Mbps Full Duplex.
• Share a folder on each PC. Myshare for instance.
• Log on to each PC using a username and a Non-blank password.
• Make sure the Guest account is enabled. Should be by default on XP-home.
• Verify connectivity by doing from PC-A start~run~\\PC-B\myshare and a Windows Explorer window should open showing the contents of the folder on PC-B.

Note that TCP/IP utilities like ping, net view, etc. will not work with NetBeui.