Why activation is needed for changing slave drives?

[xfile]

Hi all,

Windows asked me to reactivate when I was testing spared HDDs to see if each
one is still working.

I was amazing since nothing of the system has been changed except the slave
HDD. It prompted me to re-activate again after I changed the second "slave"
drives.

It was an easy one and went through just a few seconds via Internet. But
this is something I called - annoying.

 

[Whatsit]

Hi all,

Windows asked me to reactivate when I was testing spared HDDs to see if
each one is still working.

I was amazing since nothing of the system has been changed except the
slave HDD. It prompted me to re-activate again after I changed the second
"slave" drives.

It was an easy one and went through just a few seconds via Internet. But
this is something I called - annoying.

AFAIK it doesn't for slave drives, you must have made some other changes
over time to be asked to reactivate.

Are you sure you didn't move the system drive to an add on controller, like
a SATA card or someting since installing?
You only need to boot once for the changes to be recorded

I have swapped plenty of slave drives around without ever being asked to
re-activate.

 

[xfile]

I won't be so surprised if I did those things mentioned.

There were two bad drives among the rest of good ones though.

I need the system drive to boot up so I could know if the slave is working
and what are inside it to be copied or erased.

 

[Harry Ohrn]

I keep a copy of Bart's Pe handy for things like this. Bart's PE is a
bootable CD that runs a stripped down version of XP completely off the CD by
passing running the OS from your computer. It is very handy. See here
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

 

[Harry Ohrn]

Here's another version of Bart's PE that works very well
http://www.ubcd4win.com/

 

[kurttrail]

Hi all,

Windows asked me to reactivate when I was testing spared HDDs to see
if each one is still working.

I was amazing since nothing of the system has been changed except the
slave HDD. It prompted me to re-activate again after I changed the
second "slave" drives.

It was an easy one and went through just a few seconds via Internet.
But this is something I called - annoying.

It shouldn't have triggered PA, but PA is a buggy useless piece of
anti-consumer crap.

--
Peace!
Kurt Kirsch
Self-anointed Moderator
http://microscum.com
"It'll soon shake your Windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'."