Hey

I was reloading my friend's machine with XP Pro. I took his HDD from
his machine and stuck it in mine as a slave, backed up his data, and
swapped my hard drives. I then formatted it and reinstalled windows,
and restored his data. At this point, his drive booted perfectly in my
machine. I packed it up and sent it home with him.

After he stuck it in his machine, however, he gets "A disk read has
occurred. Press alt+ctrl+delete to reboot".

The drive booted fine 30 minutes before he picked it up. Is this some
kind of anti-piracy protection built into XP? If so, is Microsoft
basically going to make me take his whole machine home with me to
reinstall windows?

Also, might this be a bios problem? The bios recognizes the drive, but
my friend told me that he tried to boot the system without the drive in
it. Did the bios disable the drive because it didn't find it or
something?

I don't think it is a defective drive, as it booted in mine only
minutes before he tried it in his. It was transported in a static bag
and he grounded himself before touching it...

Thanks

Pulsar

Not a BIOS problem.
Built in XP Security Feature.
You must run a recovery install on his HD installed in his Case not to
lose all of his files.

PulsarSL wrote:
> I was reloading my friend's machine with XP Pro. I took his HDD
> from his machine and stuck it in mine as a slave, backed up his
> data, and swapped my hard drives. I then formatted it and
> reinstalled windows, and restored his data. At this point, his
> drive booted perfectly in my machine. I packed it up and sent it
> home with him.
>
> After he stuck it in his machine, however, he gets "A disk read has
> occurred. Press alt+ctrl+delete to reboot".
>
> The drive booted fine 30 minutes before he picked it up. Is this
> some kind of anti-piracy protection built into XP? If so, is
> Microsoft basically going to make me take his whole machine home
> with me to reinstall windows?
>
> Also, might this be a bios problem? The bios recognizes the drive,
> but my friend told me that he tried to boot the system without the
> drive in it. Did the bios disable the drive because it didn't find
> it or something?
>
> I don't think it is a defective drive, as it booted in mine only
> minutes before he tried it in his. It was transported in a static
> bag and he grounded himself before touching it...

So...

Your computer and his are 100% identical machines. No differences? Same
make/model of motherboard, processor, video card, etc..?

If not - then you wasted quite a bit of effort. Backing up his hard drive
in your machine.. Good.
Installing his Windows XP while his hard drive was in YOUR machine - Not
Good.

Get him to perform a repair install...

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341

Also - in the future - perhaps have someone around who knows about such
things while doing it. =)

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Thanks... I should have known Windows wouldn't have liked that.

But, please, enlighten me. How does this prevent piracy?

Pulsar

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Thanks... I should have known Windows wouldn't have liked that.
>
> But, please, enlighten me. How does this prevent piracy?

Who said it did? Or had anything at all to do with that 'feature" of
Windows XP?
That would have been my mentioning of "Activation". I did not (and am not
now) bothering to mention that.

Truthfully - that has less to do with piracy prevention and more to do with
the complicated coding of Windows XP. That's why applications like Sysprep
exist (from Microsoft) - so imaging across different (but "somewhat
similar") hardware can occur.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Shenan Stanley wrote:

> Who said it did? Or had anything at all to do with that 'feature" of
> Windows XP?
> That would have been my mentioning of "Activation". I did not (and am not
> now) bothering to mention that.

Oh. I thought when trooper said "security" he was refering to
activation.

Repair install didn't work for me. Followed the directions on both of
the above links, still had the error upon reboot. Ended up having to
reformat and reinstall Windows, then slap my HDD in and copy his stuff
back over. Anyway, got it sorted out, thanks.

Pulsar