Reinstalling Vista on a new hard drive...Reactivation?

[Sandan]

I'm getting a new SATAII hard drive this week. I have Vista Ultimate (Activated) currently running as a Dual boot with XP on a separate Drive. The thing is that the new drive will be faster and I want to put Vista on it. I will be swapping out the drive that Vista is on now and plan on leaving the drive XP is on. My fear is that I may have to reactivate by calling Microsoft for a new key. Of course I could do so but really want to avoid that hassle. Any suggestions?

 

[dguy6789]

If the rest of your pc hardware does not change, you should be able to just activate through Vista without ever needing the phone. I do not know if a change in hard drive size is considered a big enough difference to make the program have you call Microsoft.

 

[HeartView]

I don't think there is any way you are going to avoid it, but it may not actually result in a call to Microsoft (meaning you may be able to do it electronically). One thought would be to boot into XP and then copy the Vista files from the old partition to the new drive AFTER you've done the installation to the drive but BEFORE you attempt the activation.

 

[Sandan]

HeartView, Your suggestion is intriguing. Which specific files are you suggesting I copy from the old Vista to the new one? I don't think you mean copying everything since you refer to installing Vista on my new drive first. Thanks.

 

[HeartView]

Originally posted by: Sandan
HeartView, Your suggestion is intriguing. Which specific files are you suggesting I copy from the old Vista to the new one? I don't think you mean copying everything since you refer to installing Vista on my new drive first. Thanks.

To be honest, I'm not entirely certain which files would need to be copied in this case. If all else is the same, though, then copying everything wouldn't be such a bad thing, so long as the BOOT.INI settings point to the right location. Since I do not have Vista I really can't be certain if there is anything that you should NOT copy over, but in past versions of Windows this approach has worked well for me in situations like yours.

 

[corkyg]

Can't say abut Vista, but I change HDDs regularly with XP Pro and have never incurred a reactivation. On the other hand, my stupid Adobe Acrobet 7.0 inists on it every time. I finally learned to unactivate it for a transfer prior to HDD cloning, and then reactivate it on the changed drive. It's a real PITA, . . . but that's Adobe.

I think Microsoft requires more than a HDD change to cross the hash threshhold.

 

[zig3695]

Originally posted by: Sandan
I'm getting a new SATAII hard drive this week. I have Vista Ultimate (Activated) currently running as a Dual boot with XP on a separate Drive. The thing is that the new drive will be faster and I want to put Vista on it. I will be swapping out the drive that Vista is on now and plan on leaving the drive XP is on. My fear is that I may have to reactivate by calling Microsoft for a new key. Of course I could do so but really want to avoid that hassle. Any suggestions?

i just installed vista home premium OEM on a 20gb harddrive, then i cloned that to a 120gb drive and i now use that. i didnt need to re-activate, the process went without a hitch. that 20gb drive is now my emergency rescue disk

 

[nippyjun]

If your vista is retail full version then it should just activate online.

 

[zig3695]

oem and retail versions activate in the same manner, and have the same re-activation guidelines. oem just gives m$ the opportunity to kill the license if they feel that you transferred too many times, but thats unlikely to happen.

 

[nerp]

You could just do the ole backup and restore trick. . .