Will I Still Be Activated After Upgrade

[VegesNerd]

I presently own a Pentium 3 running at 450 mHz with XP Pro. (FULL VERSION NOT AN UPGRADE) installed on a 100 gig HD.

I need to upgrade to a faster machine.

QUESTION: If I simply transfer the HD to the new machine will the O.S. still be activated?

If not, will an OVER THE TOP reinstall get me up and running again?

Thanks for any advice.

Gary

Edited May 13, 2009 by geek
made topic title conform to rule 11

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

activation will likely be the least of your concerns.

Unless the new machine has the same IDE/raid controller, youll likely get a looping BSOD on the first boot with INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_VOLUME. there are ways around this but they are iffy at best. (IE reinstalling 'Standard IDE controller' or possibly sysprep)

but if you successfully move an installation from one machine to another with different hardware, you will definitely need to reactivate. the activation was designed to do just that.

oh and im not to be a EULAcop but if thats an OEM installation, moving it to hardware other than what it was purchased on would violate the EULA and could jinx your activation. (I cant say for sure as my post-WGA experience with XP has been with VLK editions)

my advice: just reinstall a fresh copy to another drive, slave your old drive to it, move anything critical over and reinstall. it sounds like more work but in my experience its not worth the trouble to transfer and salvage an old install.

[ChiefZeke]

Assuming it's not OEM the first thing to do after swapping the hard drive is to boot from the XP CD and do a repair install. The repair will allow XP to install drivers/etc for the new motherboard.

This is assuming you've updated th XP CD to the latest service pack and that you have used RyanVM Integrator or similar to include addons/updates/etc and possible used DriverPacks also.

Rayn: http://www.ryanvm.net/forum/

DriverPacks: http://forum.driverpacks.net/

[VegesNerd]

Geek,

Thank you for your advice even though it simply verified my worst fears.

ChiefZeke,

I took a look at the RAYN and DriverPacks sites but haven't a clue as to how to make use of them.

I'm a fairly competent hardware guy but when it comes to Software my brain goes numb.

As a side note:

Maybe G.M. could take a lesson from Bill Gates here.

Simply require all new car purchases be registered (activated) with G.M.

Then when the customer modifies his vehicle, with after market parts, the on board microprocessor shuts down until the owner calls G.M. and requests re-activation, for an additional cost of course.

And when the vehicle is sold into the used (pre-owned) market, the new owner would also be required to re-register the car with G.M. at an additional cost. And if G.M. priced this cost high enough, it could effectively eliminate its used car competition.

G.M. might sell this plan to the American public by pointing out that Taxpayer money wouldn't be needed to bale out they're ASSES anymore.

And why stop here. After all, T.V. sets, Refrigerators, Washer/Driers, etc. etc. are all controlled with microprocessors now a days.

If you think something like this couldn't happen, then you don't really understand the corporate mind set. ANYTHING TO ENHANCE THE BOTTOM LINE.

Gary

[GrofLuigi]

You see, you're wrong on that one. Microsoft would never support bailout.

Or would they?

:D

GL

[cluberti]

Maybe G.M. could take a lesson from Bill Gates here.

Simply require all new car purchases be registered (activated) with G.M.

Then when the customer modifies his vehicle, with after market parts, the on board microprocessor shuts down until the owner calls G.M. and requests re-activation, for an additional cost of course.

And when the vehicle is sold into the used (pre-owned) market, the new owner would also be required to re-register the car with G.M. at an additional cost. And if G.M. priced this cost high enough, it could effectively eliminate its used car competition.

G.M. might sell this plan to the American public by pointing out that Taxpayer money wouldn't be needed to bale out they're ASSES anymore.

And why stop here. After all, T.V. sets, Refrigerators, Washer/Driers, etc. etc. are all controlled with microprocessors now a days.

If you think something like this couldn't happen, then you don't really understand the corporate mind set. ANYTHING TO ENHANCE THE BOTTOM LINE.

The only flaw in your argument is piracy. It'd be like GM providing the regular maintenance for it's vehicles for free, but half the people who use GMs cars actually didn't pay them for it, but still expect GM to service the vehicle's systems for free (and some people, forever rather than have an end of life date where you're expected to move up to something newer after 10 years).

Microsoft does it to try and get money from people who use their software - is it the best method? I don't know, sincerely. But it is a method, and if it didn't work they very likely wouldn't be spending the money to maintain and develop that codebase and the servers hosting the service.

Car analogies rarely work when compared to the software industry.

[VegesNerd]

Gentlemen,

My bad, not trying to turn this post into a political discussion. And, of course, the automobile analogy isn't really valid.

However, G.M. and their after market partners do continue to support everything they have ever produced. I have no problem getting parts for my 1974 El Camino. Even modern fuel injection and electronic ignition systems which make my car run better than when it was new.

Unlike Microsoft who no longer supports Win 98. So what about those less affluent among us who cannot (especially in this economic environment) afford to upgrade their systems.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

Gentlemen,

My bad, not trying to turn this post into a political discussion. And, of course, the automobile analogy isn't really valid.

However, G.M. and their after market partners do continue to support everything they have ever produced. I have no problem getting parts for my 1974 El Camino. Even modern fuel injection and electronic ignition systems which make my car run better than when it was new.

Unlike Microsoft who no longer supports Win 98. So what about those less affluent among us who cannot (especially in this economic environment) afford to upgrade their systems.

Did you pay $10,000+ for your copy windows 98 when it was new? if you and everyone else had then im sure MS could easily afford to backport modern technologies to outdated operating systems and hardware manufacturers would still make drivers for it as a result.

But getting back on topic, I really dont see what the fuss is about WGA. Ive only had 1 system that was unrecoverable as a result and it had started life FCKGW'd and someone tried to switch its key the 'wrong' way before i got ahold of it. every other system ive had to WGA has worked with very little effort. Even calling the automated phone system has gotten easier since they launched it.

[cluberti]

Gentlemen,

My bad, not trying to turn this post into a political discussion. And, of course, the automobile analogy isn't really valid.

However, G.M. and their after market partners do continue to support everything they have ever produced. I have no problem getting parts for my 1974 El Camino. Even modern fuel injection and electronic ignition systems which make my car run better than when it was new.

Unlike Microsoft who no longer supports Win 98. So what about those less affluent among us who cannot (especially in this economic environment) afford to upgrade their systems.

That's ok. Again, though, there are holes in your argument - you don't get those parts for free, and Microsoft *still* creates patches for NT4 for customers who want to pay (the exhorbitant prices, now) for it. Ultimately, as a company that sells software, keeping people on staff (both at the dev level and the support level) to handle code that is 10, 15, even 20 years old just isn't practical for the amount of revenue it would bring in versus the cost to keep the software up and maintained. Business as a public company being as it is, Microsoft needs to continue to sell software and services that people want to buy to keep the shareholders happy, and although Vista (thanks to it's poor performance and driver support pre-SP1) was an abject failure in the marketplace, the code itself is not - and I think Windows 7 sales figures and corporate adoption over the next 3 years will bear that out.