Is there a Microsoft 'recommended' approach to swap BOOT disk on VISTA?

[markharris2000]

Should be simple enough. I bought a new PC with a SATA boot drive and
a second SATA data holding drive (two drives). I simply want to swap
the boot drive (first drive) for a higher capacity drive. The new
drive is SATA also.

I can't find any specific Microsoft sanctioned approach to do this
under VISTA PREMIUM, and lots of fragments of discussions for folks
trying to do this, with random and limited success. I even saw a
reference to what appears that the OS actually binds itself the the
disk hardware ID itself in the 'registry'.

Does anyone know of any simple suggestions, perhaps using commercial
tools (microsoft or whoever) to allow the disk swap?

 

[AJR]

Look - there is no difficulty in "swapping" a HD for another of greater
capacity - it is a relatively common practice! A new drive package willl
contain a utility disk with explanations on copying/cloning an old drive to
the new. Basic procedure is to install the newHD as a "Slave" - copy/clone
old drive the "Master" to the slave - then make the slave the master -
remove old master or make it a slave and use for whatever.

There are several good programs available - such as Acronis and Norton's
Ghost - amd most likely one or two "freeware" programs.

BUT - keep in mind - most likely reactivation of the OS will be required and
probalby necessary by phone.

 

[Richard G. Harper]

If this is a one-time swap (upgrade), use whatever utility your hard drive
manufacturer offers to copy the old drive to the new one and re-activate
when done. If you want to swap hard drives back and forth - nope, won't
work.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

BUT - keep in mind - most likely reactivation of the OS will be required and
probalby necessary by phone.

Could you explain this please?

We're told:
- Vista uses same activation system as XP
- XP watches 10 items, 7 must "survive" (i.e. lose 4, die)
- a new HD = 1 "life"
- loss of volume serial number = 1 "life"

If all of the above are true, then why should swapping HD - especially
if cloning and thus preserving volume secrial number - trigger Vista's
activation payload?

-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Tip Of The Day:
To disable the 'Tip of the Day' feature...

 

[Richard Urban]

Quite a while ago (many months actually) I read somewhere that the hard
drive constituted the largest point value against reactivation. If I can
find it again, I will post it here.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Richard G. Harper]

No Chris, I don't know who told you this but it isn't factual. Vista uses
an entirely different set of weights and algorithms for activation.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 20:03:20 -0400, "Richard Urban"

Quite a while ago (many months actually) I read somewhere that the hard
drive constituted the largest point value against reactivation. If I can
find it again, I will post it here.

Please do - that's a very significant change that will bite deep, as
HD failure and "just format and rebuild" are failrly common
maintenance crises. It's also a move away from XP SP2's weighting of
the network adapter, as a way of reducing false-positives.

As it is, tracking the volume label (which is what elevates a HD swap
to 2 lost lives in XP) is itself a breaking of the assurance that
activation watched only "hardware" changes.

So it looks as if MS has taken something that broke their original
word to us, and made it even more aggressive. Ungood.

"Trusted computing" starts with trustworthy vendors!


The other thing that makes it hard to track these problems, is
confusion between what WGA does and what Product Activation does.

AFAIK, there's no interplay between these, or has that also changed?

For example, if WGA "thinks" you are not legal, does it pull the pin
on the Product Activation payload?

------------------ ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

The rights you save may be your own

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 05:36:20 -0400, "Richard G. Harper"

No Chris, I don't know who told you this but it isn't factual.

I can't recall the URLs, but it was a claim I have seen in more than
one place, and not using the same phrasing either.

Vista uses an entirely different set of weights and algorithms for activation.

Where are these documented?

Is there a tool for Vista to monitor lives as they are lost, much as
Licenturion's XP Info tool does for XP?

Thanks for picking up on this...

-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Tip Of The Day:
To disable the 'Tip of the Day' feature...

 

[Richard Urban]

After I installed a pushed update for my Silicon Image SATA controller, upon
a reboot I found that Windows was no longer "Genuine". Product activation
was OK.

No other changes were made and no new hardware was installed. Due to the
changes in the SATA implementation, the O/S apparently thought I had
installed the O/S on a new hard drive.I could not solve for this problem.

I could not solve for the problem. I rolled back to a previous image I had
created the day before using True Image.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[John Barnes]

Contained in the FAQ, Mary Jo discovered the following question and answer:

Q. How do hardware changes impact system reactivation requirement?

A. As long as the change is below 25 points you do not need to re-activate.
Here is the table to determine total points. This applies to both Windows
Vista client and Longhorn server for retail activation, MAK activation and
KMS activation. [Emphasis added]

Component Class Name Default Weight
CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD-ROM 1
IDE Adaptor 3
Physical OS Hard Drive Serial # 11
Display Adaptor 1
SCSI Adaptor 2
Audio Adaptor 2
Network Adaptor MAC Address 2
Processor 3
RAM Amount Range (i.e. 0-512mb, 512-1GB) 1
BIOS ID ('0' always matches) 9

 

[Richard Urban]

Thank you John. That is what I must have read.

Now, I have to wonder if updating the SATA drivers presents a new hard drive
serial number to the O/S, or if something else is coming into play that we
don't know about.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Contained in the FAQ, Mary Jo discovered the following question and
answer:

Q. How do hardware changes impact system reactivation requirement?

A. As long as the change is below 25 points you do not need to
re-activate. Here is the table to determine total points. This applies to
both Windows Vista client and Longhorn server for retail activation, MAK
activation and KMS activation. [Emphasis added]

Component Class Name Default Weight
CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD-ROM 1
IDE Adaptor 3
Physical OS Hard Drive Serial # 11
Display Adaptor 1
SCSI Adaptor 2
Audio Adaptor 2
Network Adaptor MAC Address 2
Processor 3
RAM Amount Range (i.e. 0-512mb, 512-1GB) 1
BIOS ID ('0' always matches) 9

Quite a while ago (many months actually) I read somewhere that the hard
drive constituted the largest point value against reactivation. If I can
find it again, I will post it here.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 09:39:24 -0700, "John Barnes" <[email protected]>

Well spotted and linked, John Barnes !!

Contained in the FAQ, Mary Jo discovered the following question and answer:

Q. How do hardware changes impact system reactivation requirement?

A. As long as the change is below 25 points you do not need to re-activate.
Here is the table to determine total points. This applies to both Windows
Vista client and Longhorn server for retail activation, MAK activation and
KMS activation. [Emphasis added]

Already, that's a change...

Component Class Name Default Weight
CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD-ROM 1
IDE Adaptor 3
Physical OS Hard Drive Serial # 11
Display Adaptor 1
SCSI Adaptor 2
Audio Adaptor 2
Network Adaptor MAC Address 2
Processor 3
RAM Amount Range (i.e. 0-512mb, 512-1GB) 1
BIOS ID ('0' always matches) 9

OK - they've understandably dropped the obsolete PIII-only CPU serial
number, but they've added sound, which was never taken as a "core"
component before. That's prolly OK in that most mobos do have sound
built in by now, and changing sound cards would be rarer, and would
prolly not hide the integrated sound.

I don't see HD volume serial number anymore, which is good - it should
never have been an item in the first place.

The total point count is 35, assuming missing items are still weighed
in - if they aren't, then that's a problem, because the total count
could drop down to as low as 28 points, three points away from death.

We'd also want to know if the old XP policy of "if it's still there,
it's seen, even if no longer the main device" holds true, as would be
the case when retiring an old HD to act as the second HD, or an old
optical drive to a second drive, or switching from IDE to S-ATA on the
same motherboard. These details matter.

As it is, Vista is a trigger-happy vigilante, compared to XP, thanks
to the weightings and they way they can combine when a single change
is made. For example, if the process watches which IDE connector your
HD is on (as opposed to the presence of the parent IDE device) then
simply replacing a failed IDE HD with a new S-ATA HD will ring up 11+3
= 14 lost points, and 35 - 14 = 21, i.e. death.

In fact, any HD death is an immediate death sentence with this, which
is unaceptably aggressive. There are all sorts of scenarios where one
may swap physical HDs (upgrades, replacement of failed HD, courtesy HD
while doing data recovery on corrupted file systems, rebuilding an
"owned" PC on a new HD while old HD is held for forensics) and in all
of these contexts, things are sweaty enough as it is without your OS
vandor stabbing you in the back.

So this is not good news, and confirms what we suspected at the
outset, when XP's product activation was new and being debated for the
first time; as soon as we take our eyes off the ball, MS are going to
start breaking previous assurances and get more aggressive.

Nevertheless,. we need more messengers like you folks

------------ ----- --- -- - - - -

Drugs are usually safe. Inject? (Y/n)

 

[John Barnes]

Drivers certainly can present the drives differently. I have had some
drivers which report the SATA drives attached to the MOBO in the safely
remove hardware icon and other drivers don't. BIOS changes have done the
same.

Thank you John. That is what I must have read.

Now, I have to wonder if updating the SATA drivers presents a new hard
drive serial number to the O/S, or if something else is coming into play
that we don't know about.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Contained in the FAQ, Mary Jo discovered the following question and
answer:

Q. How do hardware changes impact system reactivation requirement?

A. As long as the change is below 25 points you do not need to
re-activate. Here is the table to determine total points. This applies to
both Windows Vista client and Longhorn server for retail activation, MAK
activation and KMS activation. [Emphasis added]

Component Class Name Default Weight
CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD-ROM 1
IDE Adaptor 3
Physical OS Hard Drive Serial # 11
Display Adaptor 1
SCSI Adaptor 2
Audio Adaptor 2
Network Adaptor MAC Address 2
Processor 3
RAM Amount Range (i.e. 0-512mb, 512-1GB) 1
BIOS ID ('0' always matches) 9

Quite a while ago (many months actually) I read somewhere that the hard
drive constituted the largest point value against reactivation. If I can
find it again, I will post it here.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)



in message
BUT - keep in mind - most likely reactivation of the OS will be
required and
probalby necessary by phone.

Could you explain this please?

We're told:
- Vista uses same activation system as XP
- XP watches 10 items, 7 must "survive" (i.e. lose 4, die)
- a new HD = 1 "life"
- loss of volume serial number = 1 "life"

If all of the above are true, then why should swapping HD - especially
if cloning and thus preserving volume secrial number - trigger Vista's
activation payload?



-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -
Tip Of The Day:
To disable the 'Tip of the Day' feature...
-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

 

[markharris2000]

So, the bottom line for me (and a zillion others to come) finally
emerges. Swapping a HD yields an 11point drop. Using the silly MS
Vista point system to try and identify piracy, 35 - 11 = 24!!

A PERSON MUST REACTIVATE VISTA ANYTIME THEY CHANGE THE HD, EVEN USING
THE CLONE SOFTWARE THAT COMES WITH THE DRIVE!

Yikes, seems a little aggressive. (My previous attempts to re-activate
a PC that had motherboard swapped became an endurance test with me and
a whole bunch of operators who kept asking me "how many PCs did I have
this copy of Vista installed upon". They simply had very little
training about PC upgrades requiring re-activation, and they assumed I
was pirating the software. After 15 minutes I finally found one
operator that knew what buttons to push to give me the re-activation
code)

In my case, that is just an extra step, and I guess an OK price to pay
as long as I don't have to do a whole re-install of the OS from
scratch (and then ALSO re-activate by phone etc).

 

[Richard Urban]

As long as you don't change out the hard drive (that in itself may cause a
need for reactivation) there is a way around this. Build up your system to
where you want it to be "before" you activate the system. Activate the
system. Then make an image of your system partition using Acronis TrueImage
HOME. Save the image in multiple places (on a 2nd hard drive + on an
external hard drive + on DVD's. As long as you are restoring the image to
the original hard drive, the system will just start up without having to
reactivate again.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 11:29:50 -0400, "Richard Urban"

As long as you don't change out the hard drive (that in itself may cause a
need for reactivation) there is a way around this. Build up your system to
where you want it to be "before" you activate the system. Activate the
system. Then make an image of your system partition using Acronis TrueImage
HOME. Save the image in multiple places (on a 2nd hard drive + on an
external hard drive + on DVD's. As long as you are restoring the image to
the original hard drive, the system will just start up without having to
reactivate again.

And if the HD fails? I'm using HDs with as long as a warranty I can
get (Seagate, 5 years) because I find they are a fairly common (and
very significant) point of failure.

Instant death for a HD swap is ridiculous.

Before the "weighting" shell game, you'd have to have (on paper) 4
items change, which in reality could drop down to 2 due to conjoined
items (CPU type + serial number, physical HD + volume serial number)
so already, we have a "large print giveth, small print taketh away".

Then when weighting was added (only for LAN adapter) in XP SP1 I think
it was, it was to make WPA *less* trigger-happy, particularly in the
context of laptops and docking stations. Although the total point
count went up by 2 points, the threshold was the same, so the effect
was for a retained LAN adapter to mute the effect of other changes.

And now we have this; significant changes made, causing a single item
to trigger the payload, and not a thing announced or written about it.

------------ ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

The most accurate diagnostic instrument
in medicine is the Retrospectoscope

 

[Richard Urban]

Yes! Instant death for a hard drive swap IS ridiculous. And it does occur.
Talking about it here doesn't do much good. All we can do is explain why it
happens.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[markharris2000]

Actually, the reason I asked in this forum is to prepare myself for
what lays ahead. I'm actually NOT complaining here, I just wanted to
know what to expect. When you start the process of swapping HD drives,
say for example at Sunday at 7PM, you kinda want to know what you need
on hand to complete the process. What to expect. You also want to know
to allow an extra 30 minutes fo phone re-activation, etc.

Just want to know in advance. Kinda like the old recommendations to
'Read all instructions entirely before you begin'.

Anyway, I will fire up my COPY COMMANDER V9 CDROM over the next few
days and clone my current drive to a new drive. COPY COMMANDER V9 says
it is compatible with ANY operating system and it boots from the CDROM
and runs in Pseudo-DOS mode to assure a clean CLONE is possible.
Sounds like the simple hardware swap, COPY COMMANDER CLONE, followed
by Phone Activation and I'm golden.

Regards,

 

[John Barnes]

Just a note of caution. Vista is not listed for that version of Copy
Commander and Vista uses a different version of NTFS. Others have had
problems down the road with copies produced with several older imaging
programs that are not specifically Vista ready.

 

[markharris2000]

How fun is that? I guess a copy of Acronis 10 True Image might be a
good new purchase tonight...