Changing HDs on installed PC

[Paddy]

I'm running Win2k on a PC that really has grown like topsy.
There's a CD writer, DVD reader and seven HDs in the PC, aswell as up
to 3 virtual CDsat any one time.
Two RAID cards give me the extra slots I need for all of the HDs.

My problem is that I'm thinking of buying WinXP for this machine and
another with which it is sometimes networked.

The problem that I foresee is that I'm always pulling HD's off the
machine and swapping them with others and I've heard that WinXP will
invalidate itself after doing that a small number of times, requiring
me to phone Microsoft and get a release code.... over and over again.

I was wondering if I could set my HDs to be removable media and if
this would stop this problem. Or if there was some other way around
this problem, which surely must be a FAQ.

The other problem that I see is that WinXP seems to be unreasonably
costly, but I guess there's nothing that anybody can do about that.

Thanks

 

[Kelly]

It all is well, leave it that way. Do you need XP for any reason?

 

[Opinicus]

The other problem that I see is that WinXP seems to be unreasonably
costly, but I guess there's nothing that anybody can do

about that.

There may be. It sounds like you're building and maintaining
this machine yourself. In which case, you're an original
equipment manufacturer. Generic OEM versions of WinXP are
quite cheap.

 

[Brian]

Microsoft has a really crappy algorithm for determining when you have moved
Windows XP to a different machine, and thus need to reactivate it. If the
hardware changes are occurring one at a time how could we possibly have
moved it to a different PC?

You can activate by using your modem to phone Microsoft (costly??) or over
the Internet. But it needs to be the computer you're activating that's on
the Internet, I think.

Do you really need Windows XP, and do you really need so many HDs?

 

[Mike]

I wish that I had seven drives in my computer.. that would elevate me to
'guru' status in the local bar.. only step above that would be to have Linux
installed.. oooooooh..

 

[Darrell]

Why not just leave your boot hard drive alone and only change the others.
That eliminates your problem.

 

[Opinicus]

Why not just leave your boot hard drive alone and only
change the others.
That eliminates your problem.

In my own case, that's what I decided to do initially. But
before long the absurdity of a hideously crowded 20 gig
master and a thinly populated 120 gig slave got to me...

 

[Paddy]

From what my friends tell me... change any hardware in the computer
and XP will think that it's in a different computer. The old
activation code won't work any more.
Obviously this isn't the case for inserting or removing floppies...
so I wondered if setting the HDs property to 'removable media' (if I
can do this... I don't know) would stop this nonsensical waste of
time.

To those who have questioned why I do this... that's my business, but
I have a heap of old HDs on shelves that I use as backups and for
individual projects and I connect and disconnect them as needed.

 

[Alex Nichol]

The problem that I foresee is that I'm always pulling HD's off the
machine and swapping them with others and I've heard that WinXP will
invalidate itself after doing that a small number of times, requiring
me to phone Microsoft and get a release code.... over and over again.

I was wondering if I could set my HDs to be removable media and if
this would stop this problem. Or if there was some other way around
this problem, which surely must be a FAQ.

That is a garbled view of the position

Even if you continually swap hard drives, (and I play a Scheherazade
act, leapfrogging a smaller one to the size larger than the bigger one),
that is only one class of hardware; you need to change several *classes*
before getting into a new activation - see www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

But if it has grown in that way I think I would pension off some of the
drives and reduce to a manageable number of larger ones.

 

[Paddy]

...
Even if you continually swap hard drives, (and I play a Scheherazade
act, leapfrogging a smaller one to the size larger than the bigger one),
that is only one class of hardware; you need to change several *classes*
before getting into a new activation - see www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

Is that true? about needing to change more than one class of
hardware, I mean.

My understanding was that swapping out a hard drive would count as one
change.
Do that a few more times and I have to ring Microsoft.

You're suggesting that I can swap my hard drives with impunity and
that I only get into trouble if I change the sound card or video card
as well?

Paddy

 

[Alex Nichol]

Is that true? about needing to change more than one class of
hardware, I mean.

My understanding was that swapping out a hard drive would count as one
change.
Do that a few more times and I have to ring Microsoft.

It is a change in one 'category' (or two if you reformat and change the
Volume Serial number, but you can arrange to put that back). You can
only lose the positive 'vote' from a category once; after that you can
change that category over and over without making further difference.

 

[Paddy]

Interesting. Thanks for that advice, on the basis of which I
will go ahead with the upgrade.

Incidentally, there is nothing inviolate about a HD's serial number.
Symantic Ghost probably includes it in the copy when you use the
'clone a disc' function, and in the past I have manually changed
this data with WinHex while recovering a HD that had it's boot
sectors overwritten.

Paddy

 

[Alex Nichol]

Interesting. Thanks for that advice, on the basis of which I
will go ahead with the upgrade.

Incidentally, there is nothing inviolate about a HD's serial number.
Symantic Ghost probably includes it in the copy when you use the
'clone a disc' function, and in the past I have manually changed
this data with WinHex while recovering a HD that had it's boot
sectors overwritten.

Be careful to distinguish the HD (mechanism) which has a unique serial
number, one item taken into consideration, from the Volume Serial Number
of a partition, generated afresh if it is formatted, and changed if you
convert FAT 32 to NTFS. That VSN is preserved by most cloning, but if
you reformat and do a fresh install it is useful to note it in advance
and reset it before doing the activation