Moving WinXP to a larger drive and WPA?

[Pat]

Will windows product activation prevent Windows XP Professional from being moved to a
larger drive?

I moved from an 80G drive (with one partition) to a 250G drive (with two partitions).
On the 250G, partitions were created and formatted with Partition Magic 8, then files
cloned over using Norton Ghost 2003. Drive is FAT32, so I can still boot from a floppy.

Now, with the new drive, Windows will boot, but it will get to the Windows welcome
screen and then stop. Even in Safe Mode, it won't let me finish the boot process, not
even to get to the command prompt.

A search of the web show that this is a somewhat common problem when moving XP to a
significantly larger drive. Some people theorize that Windows Product Activation won't
let you move Windows to a new larger drive because it might be pirating (even though
it's all the same motherboard, etc).

 

[JS]

I did this same thing recently using Ghost, had no problems with Windows
starting or WPA.
Only thing is that I went from an 80GB WD to a 160GB Maxtor.
Partitions were created using Windows XP.

JS

 

[Anna]

Will windows product activation prevent Windows XP Professional from being
moved to a
larger drive?

I moved from an 80G drive (with one partition) to a 250G drive (with two
partitions).
On the 250G, partitions were created and formatted with Partition Magic 8,
then files
cloned over using Norton Ghost 2003. Drive is FAT32, so I can still boot
from a floppy.

Now, with the new drive, Windows will boot, but it will get to the Windows
welcome
screen and then stop. Even in Safe Mode, it won't let me finish the boot
process, not
even to get to the command prompt.

A search of the web show that this is a somewhat common problem when
moving XP to a
significantly larger drive. Some people theorize that Windows Product
Activation won't
let you move Windows to a new larger drive because it might be pirating
(even though
it's all the same motherboard, etc).

Pat:
We'll assume the following...
1. Your "source" HDD - the 80 GB one - was non-defective and contained a
bootable, functional OS. In other words, there were no problems with that 80
GB HDD of any kind that affected the OS, and,
2. Your "destination" HDD - the 250 GB one - is similarly non-defective,
and,
3. You've connected & configured both drives correctly prior to the
disk-cloning operation.

We'll further assume that during the disk-cloning operation, it went without
a hitch - no error messages of any kind or any other untoward problems,
right?

Assuming all of the above...

Following the disk-cloning operation, did you disconnect your source HDD
from the system and make the initial boot *only* with the destination drive
connected? That may be at the root of your problem if you didn't do the
preceding.

There should be no problem using the Ghost 2003 program to clone the
contents of a smaller HDD to a larger one in an XP environment.

You must ensure that *immediately* following the disk-cloning operation the
*initial* boot to the destination HDD is made *only* with that drive
connected.

There may be, of course, another reason why the disk-cloning operation
failed but the preceding is one of the common ones. So repeat the
disk-cloning operation if the above may be the cause of the problem
Anna

 

[David B.]

Prevent it? No. You may or may not be required to reactivate.
Your problem has nothing to do with activation, it's likely you have a bad
image.

 

[Pat]

..


Pat:
We'll assume the following...
1. Your "source" HDD - the 80 GB one - was non-defective and contained a
bootable, functional OS. In other words, there were no problems with that 80
GB HDD of any kind that affected the OS, and,
2. Your "destination" HDD - the 250 GB one - is similarly non-defective,
and,
3. You've connected & configured both drives correctly prior to the
disk-cloning operation.

We'll further assume that during the disk-cloning operation, it went without
a hitch - no error messages of any kind or any other untoward problems,
right?

Assuming all of the above...

Yes to all of the above!

Following the disk-cloning operation, did you disconnect your source HDD
from the system and make the initial boot *only* with the destination drive
connected? That may be at the root of your problem if you didn't do the
preceding.

No. I booted from the original, with the new 259G as a slave, to verify that all files
were there.

There should be no problem using the Ghost 2003 program to clone the
contents of a smaller HDD to a larger one in an XP environment.

You must ensure that *immediately* following the disk-cloning operation the
*initial* boot to the destination HDD is made *only* with that drive
connected.

There may be, of course, another reason why the disk-cloning operation
failed but the preceding is one of the common ones. So repeat the
disk-cloning operation if the above may be the cause of the problem
Anna

Are you saying I can I just wipe the destination 250G drive and start over?

 

[Pat]

If I understand correctly, Windows 2000/XP keeps track of hard drives by the HD's volume
ID in the registry?

 

[Anna]

...

"Pat" responds...
Yes to all of the above!


"Pat" responds...
No. I booted from the original, with the new 259G as a slave, to verify
that all files
were there.

Are you saying I can I just wipe the destination 250G drive and start over?


Pat:
No, you need not "wipe" your destination HDD prior to the disk-cloning
operation. The disk-cloning process itself will take care of that. Just
begin again. But as I've indicated, when the disk cloning operation has
completed, immediately shut down your machine, disconnect your source drive
(the 80 GB one) from the machine, re:connect the newly-cloned drive as
Primary Master and boot. Again, ensure it's the *only* storage device
connected to machine during that initial boot. Assuming all goes well you
can later connect your former boot drive as a Slave to the new PM or connect
it anywhere on the motherboard's secondary IDE channel if that's more
convenient. I assume you plan to use that drive for storage/backup purposes.
Anna

 

[C.Joseph Drayton]

Will windows product activation prevent Windows XP Professional from being moved to a
larger drive?

I moved from an 80G drive (with one partition) to a 250G drive (with two partitions).
On the 250G, partitions were created and formatted with Partition Magic 8, then files
cloned over using Norton Ghost 2003. Drive is FAT32, so I can still boot from a floppy.

Now, with the new drive, Windows will boot, but it will get to the Windows welcome
screen and then stop. Even in Safe Mode, it won't let me finish the boot process, not
even to get to the command prompt.

A search of the web show that this is a somewhat common problem when moving XP to a
significantly larger drive. Some people theorize that Windows Product Activation won't
let you move Windows to a new larger drive because it might be pirating (even though
it's all the same motherboard, etc).

Hi Pat,

If the drive type is different (not size . . . type, ie
SATA, PATA, eSATA, SCSI, etc) then you may have to do a
repair install.

Ciao . . . C.Joseph

"A promise is nothing more than an attempt,
to respond to an unreasonable request."

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

Will windows product activation prevent Windows XP Professional from being moved to a
larger drive?

It shouldn't, no.

I moved from an 80G drive (with one partition) to a 250G drive (with two partitions).
On the 250G, partitions were created and formatted with Partition Magic 8, then files
cloned over using Norton Ghost 2003. Drive is FAT32, so I can still boot from a floppy.

Now, with the new drive, Windows will boot, but it will get to the Windows welcome
screen and then stop. Even in Safe Mode, it won't let me finish the boot process, not
even to get to the command prompt.

That looks like an activation problem, but is not.

XP is too fragile to survive a file-level scrape-over, even if careful
to move all files. What worked so well with Win9x, is broken in XP.

Instead, you should image the partition from the old HD to hte new
one, making sure that the new HD is set in the corresponding device
position (i.e. if old HD was 1st HD in the BIOS discovery sequence,
then the new one should be as well, at the time you image to it; else
you may get the wrong self-reference value in the PBR).

A search of the web show that this is a somewhat common problem when moving XP to a
significantly larger drive. Some people theorize that Windows Product Activation won't
let you move Windows to a new larger drive because it might be pirating (even though
it's all the same motherboard, etc).

To manage activation risks in XP, get Licenturion's tool here:

http://www.licenturion.com/xp/xpinfo-exe.zip

The parent site URL is...

http://www.licenturion.com/xp/

Run this on the old PC. It will either tell you it can't read the
license acivation status, as applies to BIOS-locked OEM, no-activation
VLK, or an installation not yet activated, or it will show you your
component "lives". If you lose 4+ lives, you die.

Changing the HD loses 1 life.

Changing the HD controller (e.g. replacing an IDE HD with a S-ATA one)
may lose 1 life, plus trigger other problems.

Changing the volume serial number will lose 1 life, but this is
preserved if you image the original partition.

So unles you have already "lost" other lives, the process should not
trigger an activation demand. In any case, the failure pattern you
are seeing is not an activation demand, but a deeper problem.


There is no Licenturion tool for Vista. If you need to know your
activation life status in Vista, you're stuffed.


Other caveats:

137G limit
- BIOS must support > 137G
- OS installation must be at least SP1, preferably SP2
- if possible and prudent, install SP on old HD before swap

Bad cluster markers
- imaging process will carry over inappropriate bad cluster markers
- this is the only context where these no longer mean trouble
- shrinking the volume may invalidate over-the-edge markers
- this may cause ChkDsk /F to clean them up

On the last topic, see...

http://cquirke.blogspot.com/2007/02/hd-replacement-and-bad-cluster-markers.html

....and this page that is referenced by the above:

http://www.djkaty.com/drupal/ntfsbadsectors

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

When Occam's Razor meets the Halting Problem,
the Halting Problem wins

 

[Andy]

If I understand correctly, Windows 2000/XP keeps track of hard drives by the HD's volume
ID in the registry?

Windows uniquely identifies a hard drive by the disk signature
contained in the drive's MBR. In addition, it identifies partitions in
a hard drive by using the disk signature in combination with the
location of the partitions on the drive. This information is contained
in MountedDevices in the registry.

When you boot the computer from the original drive, the Windows loader
checks the disk signatures of other drives. If it finds more than one
identical signature, as in the case of a clone, it changes the disk
signature of the duplicate disk. Once this happens the clone is
rendered unbootable without the original disk present, since the
information in MountedDevices in the clone's registry points to
partitions on the original disk.

One way to fix the problem is to restore the disk signature in the
clone's MBR with the disk signature of the original drive. Another way
to fix the problem is to boot the computer with a DOS diskette, and
run the command fdisk /MBR, which has the side effect of zeroing the
disk signature. Then when you boot the clone, the Windows loader will
see that the disk signature is zero, create a new disk signature, and
modify the MountedDevices data in the registry to correspond with the
new disk signature.

 

[Pat]

Thanks for the terrific information!

It shouldn't, no.
floppy.

That looks like an activation problem, but is not.

XP is too fragile to survive a file-level scrape-over, even if careful
to move all files. What worked so well with Win9x, is broken in XP.

Instead, you should image the partition from the old HD to hte new
one, making sure that the new HD is set in the corresponding device
position (i.e. if old HD was 1st HD in the BIOS discovery sequence,
then the new one should be as well, at the time you image to it; else
you may get the wrong self-reference value in the PBR).


To manage activation risks in XP, get Licenturion's tool here:

http://www.licenturion.com/xp/xpinfo-exe.zip

The parent site URL is...

http://www.licenturion.com/xp/

Run this on the old PC. It will either tell you it can't read the
license acivation status, as applies to BIOS-locked OEM, no-activation
VLK, or an installation not yet activated, or it will show you your
component "lives". If you lose 4+ lives, you die.

Changing the HD loses 1 life.

Changing the HD controller (e.g. replacing an IDE HD with a S-ATA one)
may lose 1 life, plus trigger other problems.

Changing the volume serial number will lose 1 life, but this is
preserved if you image the original partition.

So unles you have already "lost" other lives, the process should not
trigger an activation demand. In any case, the failure pattern you
are seeing is not an activation demand, but a deeper problem.


There is no Licenturion tool for Vista. If you need to know your
activation life status in Vista, you're stuffed.


Other caveats:

137G limit
- BIOS must support > 137G
- OS installation must be at least SP1, preferably SP2
- if possible and prudent, install SP on old HD before swap

Bad cluster markers
- imaging process will carry over inappropriate bad cluster markers
- this is the only context where these no longer mean trouble
- shrinking the volume may invalidate over-the-edge markers
- this may cause ChkDsk /F to clean them up

On the last topic, see...

http://cquirke.blogspot.com/2007/02/hd-replacement-and-bad-cluster-markers.html

...and this page that is referenced by the above:

http://www.djkaty.com/drupal/ntfsbadsectors





When Occam's Razor meets the Halting Problem,
the Halting Problem wins

 

[Pat]

Based on what you all told me, I cloned to the new HD all over again. But what I did
differently was instead of cloning from WinXP, I created a WinXP boot disk with DOS
Ghost on it. Booted to the Ghost disk, and performed the clone.

Aftter the clone was complete, I shut down the computer, removed the original HD, and
put the new HD in the first cable position (remember, these are IDE drives). After one
boot, XP popped up that it recognized new hardware and wanted a new boot. Rebooted, and
everything seems to run great!

Because I am paranoid, I'm saving the original HD as a backup. The new HD is a very fast
DeskStar and Wow, does this computer scream!

I'll next be converting the HD to NTFS, and then setting it to two partitions. Thanks
very much to everyone that helped!

Pat