Volume ID

[William F. Hill, Jr.]

I am interested in changing the drive serial number but I understand that
there may be some risks. Anyone have any experience using a program called
VolumeID?

I am running Win XP Home with NTFS.

Bill

 

[S.Sengupta]

Hi!
While WinNT/2K and Windows 9x's built-in Label utility lets you change
the labels of disk volumes, it does not provide any means for changing
volume ids. This utiltity, Volumeid, allows you to change the ids of FAT
and NTFS disks (floppies or hard drives) on both Windows NT/2K and
Windows 9x.
Usage: volumeid <driveletter:> xxxx-xxxx

This is a command-line program that you must run from a command-prompt
window.

Note that changes on NTFS volumes won't be visible until the next
reboot. In addition, you should shut down any applications you have
running before changing a volume id. NT may become confused and think
that the media (disk) has changed after a FAT volume id has changed and
pop up messages indicating that you should reinsert the original disk
(!). It may then fail the disk requests of applications using those drives.
[http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/misc.shtml#VolumeId]
regards/
ssg MS-MVP
pronetworks.org

 

[Alex Nichol]

I am interested in changing the drive serial number but I understand that
there may be some risks. Anyone have any experience using a program called
VolumeID?

I am running Win XP Home with NTFS.

That program works fine. I recommend it for resetting Volume Serial
number after conversion to NTFS or after reformatting. NOte that if you
change it in other circumstances, you will lose one of the 'votes' that
the machine is 'substantially the same hardware' for Product Activation
(see www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm)

 

[Plato]

That program works fine. I recommend it for resetting Volume Serial
number after conversion to NTFS or after reformatting. NOte that if you

Specifically, why?

 

[mark7dc]

Specifically, why?

Before reformatting, record the Volume ID. Then after reformatting and
installing XP, you will see a new Volume ID, and you may have to activate
by phone because it appears as if XP has been installed on a second PC.
That is easily corrected by replacing the new Volume ID with the old
one, thus allowing you automatic activation via the internet. Alex will
save me here if I didn't get it exactly right, I hope.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Specifically, why?

Because a conversion to NTFS changes it, and it is one of the hardware
items that goes into the Product Activation 'hash' so unless you put it
back you lose a vote in that. See www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

 

[Jean]

Hi, I followed this conversation and I would have a question for Alex (or
anybody else that would have the answer) :
Could all this thing about Volume ID cause the system restore to go crazy
when someone upgrade his C drive for a larger one or convert from FAT32 to
NTFS? I did both and since then I'm having problems with system restore (see
copies of my posts below). I read other posts from people having the same
kind of problems and nobody seems to have an answer.
Thanks,
Jean.

--

I recently purchased a new hard drive, 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax plus 9, ATA
133 7200 rpm. Maxtor provides S/W
to do a drive to drive copy. After completing the drive to drive copy, and
installing the new drive as the master, I
ran into a problem. I noticed that the Windows XP "System Restore" tool does
not work. When it is selected it
creates a error report to send to Microsoft. Since this isn't working I
worry that something else might be wrong.
Also, just to make sure it wasn't the Maxtor S/W, I used PowerQuest Deploy
Center to create an image of my original
hard drive, then restore the image to the new drive, and I received the same
errors. The drive is recognized O.K.
size etc., and other utilities work great, the windows/emachine help,
surfing the web, my TV tuner, DVD
s/w, etc.. The windows version, I believe, is XP SP1. Any help would be
very appreciated.

Koko,
Had to reply, even though I can't help...but I have exactly the same
problem...and with a Maxtor drive (not
the problem I believe), but there appears little help on the web anywhere
for this.

I am facing the same type of problem as the one described below: I upgraded
my drive from a 20G to a 80G using
Maxtor utility called Maxblast3 which copied everything from the old drive
to the new drive. Everything seems to
work perfect except for the system restore which refuses to start.
Apparently the service can't start because the
specified path is invalid but I checked and the file is there
(c:\win\system32\svchost.exe). I went on
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_abc.htm as suggested but I could not
find any indication as to what can I do
to fix the problem.
Thanks in advance,

Also, I put back the old drive in the system as a secondary drive and gave
it the letter L. Now the system restore tab is available but shows me the L
drive as being the system drive eventhough it was formatted NTFS and
contains nothing!!! Could it be related to volume serial number?
Thanks,
--
I'm also having the same problem from basically the same scenario except I
used the Seagate Disk Wizard 2003
utility to create my new hard drive and copy the old one. Now get the "Path
not found" failure when I click on the
System Restore tab. I ran 'srdiag' and in the drivetable.txt file it
creates, my old hard drive is
still listed (as drive E even though it no longer is attached to my system
at all. I suspect this has
something to do with the problem but have no idea how to correct it. Would
appreciate any help anybody gets on
this problem.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Hi, I followed this conversation and I would have a question for Alex (or
anybody else that would have the answer) :
Could all this thing about Volume ID cause the system restore to go crazy
when someone upgrade his C drive for a larger one or convert from FAT32 to
NTFS? I did both and since then I'm having problems with system restore (see
copies of my posts below).

No - Volume ID would not do that.

If it has got into trouble, it is probably sensible to clear it out and
let it start clean too. System Restore. Check 'Disable System Restore,
and OK, reboot. Now have Folder Options - View set to show Hidden
files, and *not* Hide Protected mode ones and delete everything in the
System Volume Information folder on each drive

Start SR up again, and I suggest reviewing the settings for each drive.
There is not much point having it enabled on data drives, and on ones
with System or Programs I would reduce the space allotted if more than
say 1GB - I use 500MB, the minimum is 200 which will only handle maybe a
week of points. But the default of 12% of a drive seems too much for
its own good on modern large drives

 

[Jean]

Hello Alex, too bad you're so far, I'd take you out for a drink... you are
great. After 3 infernal days of looking for all kinds of solutions, posting
my problem on 3 different newsgroup and trying all kinds of thing, you came
in with a perfect solution. My problem was that I could not disable system
restore from the tab in system properties as I would run into a run32.dll
error; I never though that I could disable it from computer
management/services/system restore which is what I just did, then I rebooted
and instantly my problems were solved: I had access to the system restore
tab and the system restore was started (which I checked in services). Then I
enabled system restore, corrected the parameters (500Mb for system disk,
disabled on data disks) and created a new restore point. My system is back
to normal now.
Thanks a lot,