I have succeeded in cloning my 40GB hard disk (OEM XP) to a new 80GB hard disk. Is it illegal to do this?
Answers:
No, it is not illegal to clone your hard drive for backup or upgrade purposes. When you cloned the computer, did you clone it as partition to partition; partition to disk; disk to partition; or disk to disk? If you cloned it as disk to disk, everything should be the exact sameway. If you cloned partition to disk, partition to partition, or disk to partition, all registry setting may not copy over, boot information will not copy over, and information from other partitions that may have been viewed by Windows will not copy over. This will cause problems with applications such as Dr. Watson, Firewall applications, and antivirus' and malware detectors. Keep in mind that when you clone disks, you should always do a disk to disk cloning.
You should be able to replace the disk in your computer with a bigger one without any problems. There is the possibility that XP will insist that you re-register the license as something in the machine has changes... but you don't say that so it probably didn't happen.
It depends how you cloned your disk drive... if you copied files you may have missed something which has caused the 80Gb disk to have a problem. If you used a partition manager to clone the partition it shouldn't have missed anything.
It sounds like the computer got infected with something... if you failed to get all of the files over to the 80Gb disk it maybe you left the computer vulnerable to attack... and something got in which has compromised the software more.
Get an AV and spyware application and scan your computer.
I've been doing this procedure several times now, i think you missed a procedure that you should bootup to the 80gb first after cloning your hard drive, make sure that all programs are working, then you can connect the slave hard drive after that. You can try to upgrade you XP or else you have to reload the windows from scratch now! but remove the slave HD. connect it after reloading the OS
Legality is a personal issue so i would not play a preacher. On technical front the best way to clone ur harddisk is to use a software called BootitNG from www.terabyteunlimited.com . To your very amazement it supports cloning the same OS partitions multiple times on the same Harddrive. What this means that u just dont need seperate harddrives for this job. You can for instance install say Ubuntu linux and copy it several times on same harddrive making as many different partions you like all bootable. It is very user friendly and free for 30 days which will serve your purpose cause u need it for just a couple of hours.
if you have a genuine windows xp os, then i think it is illegal. after you bought your new hard drive, all you have to do was to make the 80 gb drive as your slave since it is just the same the other way around. what i mean is you should have stick with your 40 gb drive as your windows xp drive. all i can suggest is to re-install your system. because eventhough you have to fix it by troubleshooting, it will still have errors. so, to make it sure your system works properly, then you have to reformat you hard drive and use the 80gb just the way you want it. i hope it will help you.
First, ignore the idiot. Microsoft will be more than happy to find someone else using pirated software, because they actually prosecute.
You own the license for that copy of XP. You can put it on any drive of your own that you want, but you can't legally have it on more than three working machines.
When you add a drive to your computer, all you do are two things-make sure that your new drive has a jumper set to slave, rather than the 'cable select' default position; and make sure that the original drive is jumpered to master rather than the default 'cable select' position, which most people forget to do. SATA drives have the same problem-but work fine being improperly set as long as there's only a single drive present.
Did you bother to check the HCL when you got your new drive? If it's properly jumpered and has been from the start then most likely you got a drive that doesn't work with your existing hardware, which the HCL would have told you.
When you have a working machine, and choose to make hardware changes, to say something like "What's up with Microsoft?" basically shows that in the future, you should find other people to make those changes for you.
I dont think that would be ILLEGAL
So keep enjoying,
coz you did the right thing ok
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