it will get worse before it gets better. Micro$hit is implementing that businesses pay an annual lease rather than buyign their software because "they'll need support anyway". I have had my share of run-ins with M$hit and they refused to activate my office 2000 when I needed to rebuild my machine for the umpteemth time. That was the last time I bought a license for office from them, I happened to obtain a version of office 2000 for large businesses that does not need activation. No Offfice XP here, no Office 2003 etc. More and more this is happening: businesses obtaining a legal license and then obtaining a work-around for the activation so they are not in shitstreet when they need to restore something and the M$hit office is not available (closed) or is creating problems. For backing up your WPA activation of XP you may want to take a look at RockXP on this website: http://www.korben.tk. You can also find a lot of utilities on http://www.nirsoft.net/ which really shows how insecure your machine and network are. And in case you have forgotten the login passwords of your backup that you made x years ago then you can use the offline password editor: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ Let's be explicit here: I am not advocating anything for illegal purposes here, just a way to create a work around when you are already in the possesion of a legal license. Enjoy vital-analitix PS I have replaced the standard windows logon with a OEM logon that is using hardware (security chip with biometrics and a pass-phrase - up to 256 characters) which makes the run-of-the-mill bypassing rather difficult.
If you are into virtual paranoia then you can remove all kind of privacy stuff with the last free version of this tool: http://www.chip.de/downloads/c1_downloads_12992822.html It also has a utility to set "registration done" so you can download updates from MSN without having to register. (although you can do this by having your updates automatically done) Enjoy
??? I clone regularly with Acronis and never have to activate with Micorsoft. Sorry, but I don't have a clue as to where you should look for help on this.
gnome now you mention it, you are 100% right: I have replaced about 4 hard disks over the years and never had to reactivate because of cloning. Only when reinstalling I needed to reactivate.... Something else going on here than just cloning...
i beg to differ. check out dell's website or google for haddisk failure and you will find many heart-broken nightmares -- i mean major massive failures in the worldwide scale, affecting multiple manufacturers and product models. but they are all hush-hush, you know.
Could be... Dell. But if you make a clone, why would that be any different than the original and require activation??
Knoppix is always handy as a standby. Recipe M$ -> Linux (1) Pick a distro (Novell-Suse, Ubuntu, many others); (2) Get the CD's - can download from web; (3) Decide on HD. Possibilities: free space left on your windoz hd; hang on another disk; (here QtParted on Knoppix may be very handy) Note that the linux Grub boot will install itself over the windoz boot sector but Grub will boot widoz WITHOUT ANY PROBLEM for you. Windoz crap can't do the reverse for you: it's designed to screw you; Note: A linux distro will install in a fraction of the time of windoz. Don't forget that applications like Office will install themselves in one shot. No more messing with (1) XP install; then (2) MSOffice install with their respective darn protection gimmicks - they may work for you once, but what if next year the won't go. You're screwed. This happened to a lot of people. Google to find out. (4) Once you get your linux going, getting to read your NTFS or FAT windoz partitions is a piece of cake; (windoz is designed so as not to be able to read linux files - widoz even practically forces you to move to NTFS, given that FAT is too easy to read from non M$- OS) (5) Start OpenOffice on your old word .doc files. It runs usually smoother than Word; (6) If you have other windoz computers running on your local area network, Samba under linux will connect to these effortlessly. Windoz can't do the reverse for you. It's designed to screw you. You will be amazed how smoothly everything will work out. You will also be surprised about performance. Booting linux itself is already twice as fast as slo XP. PS: Never do anything without backups first. Read the earlier posts. I use Acronis. It's a shame that M$ after all those years cashing in like mad on windoz, still can't include a decent backup tool. They don't have anything coming even near to Acronis. I forgot to mention that all popular distros have online upgrades that really work. They also carry an unbelieveble choice of free application software. Antivirus: clamav+Klamav Good luck nononsense
Difficult to answer. Many people seem to encounter problems. Other don't - they are perhaps a bit more savvy. The bottom line is that if you have problems in windoz, you often don't know what is really going on. It's designed that way. With Linux, you ALWAYS can find things out if you want to and/or have to.