i bought a 200 dollar emachine computer a while back that came with vista home basic on it and thats the OS i have been using since even though the only thing that remains from the emachines PC is the HDD. i recently bought a western digital 250gb 7200 sata drive and wanted to transfer vista and everything else to the new drive so that i can just use the emachines HDD for music and movies storage, because im guessing the WD drive would be blazing fast compared to the emachines. since my hardware has changed, every time i reformat i have to call microsoft and verify a series of numbers so that they know my copy is legit, and then they activate it for me by reading out a dozen boxes of numbers. someone told me that if i switch the OS to the new hard drive, that microsoft wont be able to validate it anymore, and i would then have to buy an entirely new OS. which needless to say, i dont wanna do. is there any way i can do this?
added new HD, want to xfer OS to it
- Thread starter DirtyD86
- Start date
3 of 7
New Member
Acronis true image and Norton Ghost will both clone a new drive from your existing one, and I believe there are a few free ones as well.
As for MS not validating your install with a new drive, I've never had them refuse to do it and I've changed out a large number of them over the years.. I'm sure you'll be just fine if you decide to reinstall.
As for MS not validating your install with a new drive, I've never had them refuse to do it and I've changed out a large number of them over the years.. I'm sure you'll be just fine if you decide to reinstall.
TrainTrackHack
VIP Member
Hmm microsoft's validation systems or whateveryawannacall'em only refuse to validate your OS if there's *major* hardware changes. But for what I've heard, and this is strictly only *what I have heard*, but anyway i heard that you need to have a system builders licence or something to continuosly keep validating your copy of VISTA...what i heard strictly goes only with VISTA..if you don't, get your boxes, serial numbers and such ready and call Big Billy to help you. But again, i could be wrong.
Probably am.
Probably am.
3 of 7
New Member
From page 6 of the Vista EULA
http://download.microsoft.com/docum...lish_d16c019b-fa71-4fc9-a51d-a0621bddb153.pdf
15. REASSIGN TO ANOTHER DEVICE.
a. Software Other than Windows Anytime Upgrade. You may uninstall the software and
install it on another device for your use. You may not do so to share this license between
devices.
Seems to me if your not using the anytime upgrade and it's not still installed on another machine, your just fine... I see no mention of motherboard in the EULA at all... Or am I missing something here?
http://download.microsoft.com/docum...lish_d16c019b-fa71-4fc9-a51d-a0621bddb153.pdf
15. REASSIGN TO ANOTHER DEVICE.
a. Software Other than Windows Anytime Upgrade. You may uninstall the software and
install it on another device for your use. You may not do so to share this license between
devices.
Seems to me if your not using the anytime upgrade and it's not still installed on another machine, your just fine... I see no mention of motherboard in the EULA at all... Or am I missing something here?
He's swapping hard drives. That's it. You can legally do that and I've done it with my Sony Vaio.
Microsoft has been allowing mobo changes under the system builder license. It seems to me that he hasn't violated anything if MS activated the product. Pre-built machines, I'm not sure about. I'm assuming if I attempted to change the mobo in my Sony, then attempted to do a factory restore, it would probably be unsuccessful. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to know what form of OS he is using - a custom OEM disk or actual Windows disk.
Yeah, it's pretty lame, but, from what I understand, they're easing their restrictions a little.