haryo

RE: "SLP copies don't get activated because they are OEM/SLP. Are you saying you installed XP Home yourself on a machine that did NOT have XP Home before?" Now that you mention it, I can't swear to the fact that I was required to go through the activation process. It was a new laptop with XP installed. Guess I'll just try to install the operating system on the second drive and see what happens. I've read up on what SLP software is and I'm beginning to get the picture. Is there some freeware with which I can easily make my usb external 2.5" drive a clone of my internal drive? I have tried Norton Ghost but ran into problems,the nature of which I can't recall exactly, but may have appeared when I put the clone in and the laptop became confused. I realise I'm not being very helpful in providing detials, but it has been a while.

Part of my question is around activation. If I carry the installation process on the 2nd drive through the activation process, will I get red flagged by microsoft since I activated the install a year ago on the 1st drive? Alternately, my assumption is that if I don't go as far as attempting activation, and just use the 2nd drive for backing up misc data, I won't get the activation prompts when the system sees the 2nd drive as an external usb drive - but I will if I ever put the 2nd drive in and boot from it?

I've just sent them an email enquiry/question. I'm visiting in the UK, so I sent it to the MS UK folks. There seem to be fewer hurdles over here to jump over to be able to send them a simple email.

I have an HP laptop with XP home on it. I want to take out the hard drive, temporarily put in another, and reinstall the operating system on it so that if the first drive dies I can just put in the 2nd one and carry on. I would also use the 2nd drive as a usb accessed back of my critical data. I would have 2 drives with operating systems tied to the same key code. Can I do this without running into registration problems? I have tried to clone the original drive, but it's not going well and just doing a clean install in the 2nd drive seems like a way to go. Thanks, R. Young