why is it not possible to change hd without reinstall?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Axel Grude
  • Start date Start date
A

Axel Grude

Hi all,

I tried upgrading my hard drive from 40 Gig to 80 Gig, same manufacturer
same model number, using various methods; one of them was a software
supplied by the manufacturer (Seagate). Always the sames result:

drivers & desktop appear fine, logins all exist hunky dory, but as soon
as I start any client software (e.g. Microsoft Office, Mozilla etc) it
behaves as if I am a new user. So basically it forgets all user defined
settings and would force me to reinstall all client software - since I
use my machine for software development this means about 3 days of work.

so my first question is: how is it possible to replace the boor drive
without reinstalling all software on the machine? If you back up the
boot drive do you need to restore to the same manufacturer / size hard
drive to avoid reinstalling? It appears that certain registry settings
are bound to the disk id...

Even funnier: I recently replaced the motherboard on this machine (after
I failed upgrading the boot drive). After some initial troubles I did a
repair install, only needed to activate windows using the phone support:
except for drivers, I did not have to reinstall any software.

so my second question is: If the software is tied to the hardware for
copyright reasons, why does it allow replacing the motherboard, but
refuses replacing the hard drive? The only reason I can guess now is
that Microsoft wants to prevent people "cloning" their PCs at home using
the same OS installation. But this still seems to be contrary to the
concept of backup / restore. What good is a system backup if I have to
reinstall my software after a restore?

thanks in advance
Axel
 
Forgot to mention: I have a legal RETAIL version of windows XP. Oh yes,
and it is fully patched (via dialup). Which adds another day for
patching if I need to reinstall.
 
Axel said:
I tried upgrading my hard drive from 40 Gig to 80 Gig, same
manufacturer same model number, using various methods; one of them
was a software supplied by the manufacturer (Seagate). Always the
sames result:

drivers & desktop appear fine, logins all exist hunky dory, but as
soon as I start any client software (e.g. Microsoft Office, Mozilla
etc) it behaves as if I am a new user. So basically it forgets all
user defined settings and would force me to reinstall all client
software - since I use my machine for software development this
means about 3 days of work.

so my first question is: how is it possible to replace the boor
drive without reinstalling all software on the machine? If you back
up the boot drive do you need to restore to the same manufacturer
/ size hard drive to avoid reinstalling? It appears that certain
registry settings are bound to the disk id...

Even funnier: I recently replaced the motherboard on this machine
(after I failed upgrading the boot drive). After some initial
troubles I did a repair install, only needed to activate windows
using the phone support: except for drivers, I did not have to
reinstall any software.

so my second question is: If the software is tied to the hardware
for copyright reasons, why does it allow replacing the motherboard,
but refuses replacing the hard drive? The only reason I can guess
now is that Microsoft wants to prevent people "cloning" their PCs
at home using the same OS installation. But this still seems to be
contrary to the concept of backup / restore. What good is a system
backup if I have to reinstall my software after a restore?
Click to expand...

Your questions are moot only because it seems unique to your situation.

I have changed hard drives on an unknown (but large) number of machines and
using an imaging utility (ranging from the one from the hard drive
manufacturer to TrueImage and Ghost and BootItNG...) - have almost always
been able to just apply the old image to the new drive and go... In the
situations where this did not work - well the original hard drive was being
replaced for reasons other than, "I want a larger drive.." *grin*
 
Shenan said:
Your questions are moot only because it seems unique to your situation.

I have changed hard drives on an unknown (but large) number of machines and
using an imaging utility (ranging from the one from the hard drive
manufacturer to TrueImage and Ghost and BootItNG...) - have almost always
been able to just apply the old image to the new drive and go... In the
situations where this did not work - well the original hard drive was being
replaced for reasons other than, "I want a larger drive.." *grin*
Click to expand...
Shenan,

so you say this behavior is not "by design" but probably just due to a
configuration fault in my machine?

In this case, is it possible to fix this by extracting the software hive
from the registry on the original drive and reimporting it to the one on
the new drive?

tia
Axel
 
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