A Licensing No-Activation-Prompt Mystery

[Jim]

I bought a new HD for my old Athlon 600 machine. I left the original HD the
Master and made the new HD the Slave. I have a program called Norton Ghost.
I used Ghost to clone the original hard drive (along with the WinXP OS) to
the new hard drive. This was an exact copy of the actual files to the new
hard drive, not an image.

Then I made the new HD the Master and old HD the Slave. It booted right up
just like nothing happened. I can't tell the new clone from the original
except for the huge amount of free space on the newly cloned hard drive. .

I got no prompt to re-activate. In other words, WinXP did not detect the
hard drive change. Is this normal? I will be making numerous other upgrades
to this system in the near future.

 

[Joan]

I us another hard drive as backup with Ghost also. I have never has to
re-activate, but I think if you tried to install the backup on another
PC you would really have problems. Actually nothing has changed because
everything is tied to Bios. BTW, Ghost is great.

Joan

 

[Guest]

Why would you, swaping a hard drive won't trigger a
change. I have three of them I swap everyday.

 

[kurttrail]

"By the act of scrolling this post on your computer, and/or printing or
replying to this post, you agree that I am your everlasting Lord &
Saviour. Breach of this term will result in you burning in hell for
ever and ever! Amen!"

I us another hard drive as backup with Ghost also. I have never has
to re-activate, but I think if you tried to install the backup on
another
PC you would really have problems. Actually nothing has changed
because everything is tied to Bios. BTW, Ghost is great.

Joan

The installation is only tied to the BIOS if the computer manufactuter
set it up that way, and I highly doubt that many OEMs built XP machines
with a Athlon 600 CPU.

--
Peace!
Kurt
Self-anointed Moderator
microscum.pubic.windowsexp.gonorrhea
http://microscum.com
"Trustworthy Computing" is only another example of an Oxymoron!
"Produkt-Aktivierung macht frei!"

 

[Alex Nichol]

Then I made the new HD the Master and old HD the Slave. It booted right up
just like nothing happened. I can't tell the new clone from the original
except for the huge amount of free space on the newly cloned hard drive. .

I got no prompt to re-activate. In other words, WinXP did not detect the
hard drive change. Is this normal? I will be making numerous other upgrades
to this system in the near future.

As long as the drive is still to be found at boot, then there is no
effect on activation; in any case you have to change more than just one
hard drive to make the system think 'this ain't Kansas any more'. See
www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

 

[Gary Tait]

I us another hard drive as backup with Ghost also. I have never has to
re-activate, but I think if you tried to install the backup on another
PC you would really have problems. Actually nothing has changed because
everything is tied to Bios. BTW, Ghost is great.

Joan

If the original drive is still there, that is just one vote to the WPA
system, unless you sucessfully cloned the volume serial number also.