Same XP install on 2 hard drives, legal?

[CLASYS]

So, assuming you have an XP system installed on a compliant box-maker's machine [sLP] you never were prompted to activate, and you never will.

As such, make all the copies you want, since it will work on your HP machine [and not on non-HP hardware from that era; I mention this because HP is sorta Compaq also, so unlike most other box-makers, HP/Compaq essentially breaks down into "provinces" etc.].

The trick is to get it all copied. Here's a freeware way to go:

Partition your USB-based disk the same way as the booted internal HD. Again, since this is a box-maker's machine, it's guaranteed to be a C:-based system [which is something I never use; there are no good reasons for using C:, other than bad habits MS has been trying to get us to break for almost 20 years!], so you are in essence trying to clone drive C: and not much else.

Without the worry of activation because it's SLP, it is NOT necessary to even worry about cloning the volume ID, since the whole process is moot. However, if you had the second hard disk temporarily hooked into the box directly, GHOSTPE or 2003 should have been able to clone it correctly.

So, the easy way, since again, no activation worries, is to just hook your partitioned USB hard drive up, make sure it really is the same, including making sure the same active partition is set, etc. and to merely clone the contents of the C: drive to the primary partition in the USB box. This can be accomplished with the freeware program XXCOPY using the command XXCOPY /CLONE or XXCOPY /BACKUP.

The only remaining problem is that the partition boot record isn't set. [Again, GHOST should have worked; it would have done this too!] The only way to accomplish this is to run the recovery console, which can be accessed from a bootable XP CD-ROM of any vintage. [The problem is that while there needs to be a Master Boot Record or MBR on the partition-table-containing master boot block, which is the code that boots up your machine based on looking at the table contained within the code, there also needs to be a partition boot record in your partition, and this is NOT a file. This boot record is the one that is searching for the NTLDR file and finds it elsewhere on the partition, loads it into memory and starts it up on its merry way getting the rest of your system up from identifiable files, etc. Back in the DOS/Win9x days, this was done with the SYS command from DOS, but in XP has to be set in the boot partition itself, so you need that recovery console if you cannot boot, etc.]

Please note that any aborted installation that gets up to the point of asking you to continue setting up an XP install has already given you a formatted C: drive and that boot record. If you place your hard disk from the USB into the main box and subject it to that subset of an install, then all that is done. Then, put the disk back in the USB box and replace the original hard disk back in the main box, and let XXCOPY move all of the files and you should be set.

cjl

[Aegis]

Easiest solution would be to use BartPE or Windows PE.