Additional hard drive

[Robert E. Shanahan]

I have a Pavilion 8766c with windows xp professional on the 40.GB QUANTUM
FIREBALL Hard drive.
I wish to add a seagate 80.GB, and configure it as the master, while making
the existing 40.GB drive the slave. I would remove the old drive, and
install xp on the new drive, using the installation CD.

Will Microsoft require a reactivation? If so, how difficult will it be.

When I add back the 40.GB drive with jumper set to slave, should I delete
the OS from it? How do you do it , and are there any pitfalls? I have
already backed up my essential files on an external hard drive.

Thanks.

 

[RH]

you don't need to reactivate. Pull your old drive and
proceed with a normal installation on the new 80 gb
drive. after installation, jumper the old drive as a
slave and reconnect. done

 

[Tumbleweed]

I have a Pavilion 8766c with windows xp professional on the 40.GB QUANTUM
FIREBALL Hard drive.
I wish to add a seagate 80.GB, and configure it as the master, while making
the existing 40.GB drive the slave. I would remove the old drive, and
install xp on the new drive, using the installation CD.

Will Microsoft require a reactivation? If so, how difficult will it be.

When I add back the 40.GB drive with jumper set to slave, should I delete
the OS from it? How do you do it , and are there any pitfalls? I have
already backed up my essential files on an external hard drive.

Thanks.

How about using Gost or similar to copy an image of C to the new drive, then
swap them round and reboot?Should avoid many hours of OS & application
reinstallation

 

[Opinicus]

I have a Pavilion 8766c with windows xp professional on the 40.GB QUANTUM
FIREBALL Hard drive.
I wish to add a seagate 80.GB, and configure it as the master, while making
the existing 40.GB drive the slave. I would remove the old drive, and
install xp on the new drive, using the installation CD.

I did almost exactly the same thing you did though I went
from a 20 GB Quantum Fireball to a 120 GB Seagate.

The Seagate should come with a program/wizard that moves all
of your settings and programs to the new drive. I doubted
this but in fact it managed to pull it off very well, so
give it a try.

In the end however it was undone by piss-poor programming on
the part of others. A lot of the software I had installed
was "hardwired" in some way or other to the old drive with
the result that the programs wouldn't work from the new
drive: when they started up, they'd search the old drive for
files etc that they needed to run which, of course, were no
longer there. Some of them were so confused they couldn't
even be uninstalled through the Control Panel.

For this and other reasons I ended up reformatting both
drives and reinstalling WinXP and my software clean. The
little Fireball is now used to back up my "Documents and
Settings" folder on C:

--
Bob, who remembers his first hard drive had a capacity of 10
megabytes and now has files many times bigger than that

Kanyak's Doghouse
http://www.kanyak.com

 

[Ron Martell]

I have a Pavilion 8766c with windows xp professional on the 40.GB QUANTUM
FIREBALL Hard drive.
I wish to add a seagate 80.GB, and configure it as the master, while making
the existing 40.GB drive the slave. I would remove the old drive, and
install xp on the new drive, using the installation CD.

Will Microsoft require a reactivation? If so, how difficult will it be.

When I add back the 40.GB drive with jumper set to slave, should I delete
the OS from it? How do you do it , and are there any pitfalls? I have
already backed up my essential files on an external hard drive.

Thanks.

If you reinstall Windows on a new hard drive then the activation
control files will not be present on that drive and Windows will
require reactivation.

If it has been more than 120 days since you last activated your copy
of Windows then it should go through automatically via the Internet
with no problems.

If it is less than 120 days and your only hardware change since the
last activation is the new hard drive then again it should be
automatic and problem free.

The "worst case scenario" is that it may take a 5 minute free phone
call to Microsoft. Just tell them you have replaced the hard drive
and they will give you an activation code to enter manually.

Good luck



Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Frank]

Pavilion is an OEM item. Contact the OEM not Microsoft....

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have a Pavilion 8766c with windows xp professional on the 40.GB QUANTUM
FIREBALL Hard drive.
I wish to add a seagate 80.GB, and configure it as the master, while making
the existing 40.GB drive the slave. I would remove the old drive, and
install xp on the new drive, using the installation CD.

Will Microsoft require a reactivation? If so, how difficult will it be.

It would, but this is almost unchanged hardware so it would go through
on the net in a few seconds. See www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm and the
hint in Format Hard drive to conserve one 'vote' in the matter.

But I would approach this by cloning from the existing drive to the new
one, rather than reinstalling. What I use is BootIT NG, from
http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial)

Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.

With the new drive plugged in as slave/secondary, boot the floppy,
Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on Partition work.
Highlight your C:,Copy, then on left select the new drive (HD1),
highlight the Free Space in it, and Paste.

You might then consider a resize up a bit. Or I would leave the free
half of the disk so as to later make a new separate partition in it

Now click on 'View MBR' and in it highlight the entry for this new C
partition and click the 'Set Active', Click 'Write Standard MBR' and
Apply.

Close out, swap the disks to make the new one the one that boots, and
reboot into XP. When all is going well, Control Panel - Admin Tools -
Computer Management, select Disk Management and look lower right for the
graphics of the drives. R-click in the unallocated space on the one to
Create Partition; r-click in the other to Format it for data use