making a exact copy of a HD

[Dustin Decker]

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

> If you buy proprietary software, that's a risk you run.  That's what I
> really HATE about commercial software.
> 
> It may be keying of the MAC or something other than the HD anyway - have you
> tried swapping drives in the same system?

If this is Windows XP, and it's bitching about being on a new hard drive 
after cloning, then it has malfunctioned.  I too hate their new activation 
junk, but then again I use open licenses so I don't have to live with it.

As I understand it, the key is based on the CPU, Hard Drive Geometry, MAC 
addy on the NIC, and perhaps one other Plug and Play query.  Microsoft 
claims that the replacement of one of these devices (the hard drive in 
this case) won't kill your activation.  Replacing several such devices 
would make windows assume it just woke up in another computer - so it will 
stop functioning.

Dustin

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