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    Imaging and license?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by superduty, Mar 19, 2010.

  1. superduty

    superduty Notebook Consultant

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    On my laptop I repalced the HDD with an SSD. I imaged my HDD to an external drive and then installed it on the SSD. Everything worked fine.

    How does MS licensing work when you image a drive? Does that question makes sense? What prevents people from simply imaging a drive and installing it in multiple computers? Did it work because Win 7 (and any other programs I had installed) recognized that only one component (the HDD) was changed and the MOBO, etc was still the same?

    OR, Did I just get lucky?

    I want to replace the HDD in my desktop and plan on doing the same thing (it went pretty smooth for the laptop) and don't want to run into any problems as the desktop is pretty important and would rather not have any downtime.

    TIA
     
    superduty, Mar 19, 2010
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  2. KLF

    KLF NBR Super Modernator Super Moderator

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    Retail and regular OEM licences will notice that they are now in different hardware and will prompt you to activate again or to enter a new license code.

    Royalty OEM (HP, DELL, ACER etc big manufacturer) windows licenses use offline activation that depends on license code itself, certain files on your computer and certain information in your computer's BIOS. If any of those is missing after the cloning, windows is unactivated immediately and it will ask for reactivation or proper code.

    You can change some components without need for reactivation, for example hard drive and memory. Motherboard counts always as a new computer and should always need activation. As far as I know theres a hidden timer how often you can replace certain parts before computer wants reactivation. Different components have different values regarding the activation need etc. It's not that simple as I first said ;)

    There should not be any problems, if computer wants to activate then let it do so over the internet first. If internet activation fails, it will show you the phone number (at least 2 numbers in finland, one free and one with a fee). Then enter the code, answer the questions "yes, this is my original pc and yes, only one installation", then you should receive the activation code. When I've called with cellphone, I've received the activation code as SMS message afterwards.
     
    KLF, Mar 19, 2010
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