Laptop hard drive swap question

[geecee]

I have an extremely outdated P3-500 ultralight laptop but I'm starting to find that it's overwhelmed by some of the things I've been using it for (i.e. Visual Studio 2005 - VB & learning Visual C#). OTOH, I have a fairly new work laptop (Dell Latitude 610 P-M 1.86ghz, 1GB RAM). The only problem with the work laptop is that I do not have admin privileges on it and I can't really install any personal use stuff on it.

So, my thinking is this. I can swap out my work laptop's HD for an old laptop HD I currently have in an external USB case. I can then install a separate copy of XP on there and be able to use the work laptop for my own personal use. Whenever I actually need it for work, it's a quick two minute swap of HDs. On top of that, I also don't need to buy another copy of XP, as I have the original disks that came with the Dell and I can just use the cd key on the sticker on the system, since the PC guys from work wipe every PC that comes from Dell and use a preconfigured install build of XP and other standard apps that have nothing to do with anything that originally came with the machine.

An even further bonus is that I can now install Dungeon Siege 2 on the Dell lappy and play it there! (I never even bothered trying to run it on the old P3).

Does this all make sense or is there something (technical, legal or o/w) that I'm missing? TIA.

EDIT: grammar

 

[phisrow]

In all odds, you won't even need to swap the drives. A newer laptop can almost always boot off a usb connected drive. So, technically speaking, the plan should be even easier than you thought.

Legally, you are on slightly stickier ground. The XP licencing should be ok, since it's an OEM copy being used on its attached machine; but I'm pretty sure that the letter of the law would not be with you, if somebody objected to that use of a work laptop. In practice, there would be almost no way to tell, no likelyhood of damage(above and beyond the usual), and no additional security risks; but in formal terms you are probably in the wrong.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: phisrow
In all odds, you won't even need to swap the drives. A newer laptop can almost always boot off a usb connected drive. So, technically speaking, the plan should be even easier than you thought.

Negative. Windows will reinitialize the USB devices during boot, and in doing so hose itself and BSOD.

Legally, you are on slightly stickier ground. The XP licencing should be ok, since it's an OEM copy being used on its attached machine; but I'm pretty sure that the letter of the law would not be with you, if somebody objected to that use of a work laptop. In practice, there would be almost no way to tell, no likelyhood of damage(above and beyond the usual), and no additional security risks; but in formal terms you are probably in the wrong.

Legally, the work laptop is your company's property. But again, unless you do something stupid like bring the laptop back to work with the "GAMEZNPRON" drive still in it, there's not really any chance of getting busted.

Oh, and dibs on your ultralight. 🙂

- M4H

 

[geecee]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: phisrow
In all odds, you won't even need to swap the drives. A newer laptop can almost always boot off a usb connected drive. So, technically speaking, the plan should be even easier than you thought.

Negative. Windows will reinitialize the USB devices during boot, and in doing so hose itself and BSOD.

Yeah. I think the only way currently is through a BartPE build on a flashdrive that sets up a ramdisk, copies it's files there and then boots from the ramdrive (as a way around the USB problem).

Legally, you are on slightly stickier ground. The XP licencing should be ok, since it's an OEM copy being used on its attached machine; but I'm pretty sure that the letter of the law would not be with you, if somebody objected to that use of a work laptop. In practice, there would be almost no way to tell, no likelyhood of damage(above and beyond the usual), and no additional security risks; but in formal terms you are probably in the wrong.

Legally, the work laptop is your company's property. But again, unless you do something stupid like bring the laptop back to work with the "GAMEZNPRON" drive still in it, there's not really any chance of getting busted.

Oh, and dibs on your ultralight. 🙂

- M4H

Sorry. Family gets first crack. 😉 But thanks for the advice (from both of you).

 

[WackyDan]

Least it's a Dell....

All ThinkPad's and some Gateway's and HP's now come with an additional piece of firmware that could contain Absolute Software's Computrace agent if the company leveraging those laptops actually licensed and installed the agent.

The core of the issue there, is that companies don't tell their end users they do this, and if you swap a secondary drive into the ThinkPad, HP, or GW laptop that has the agent installed, the firmware will replicate itself to the spare drive, start phoning home, and report the drive change, but mainly will populate a new software inventory for the system which would flag IT to take a closer look at the system.... and there's no way for the end user to defeat that other than installing Linux..... for now.

Anyway... Dell hasn't gone down this road yet - that I know of, but they are close to incorporating it into their laptops.

Just an FYI... sometimes breaking IT policy just isn't a good idea.