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I got a new cheapo computer (€220) for a family friend who had fried her CPU/motherboard. As she had a lot of data on her old one, I transferred the IDE ATA HDD to the new one before even formatting the 150 Gb SATA drive. I switched it on and it booted up the Win XP that was on the old drive. Natch, it said there was a hardware change and I had 3 days to reactivate it. I optimistically clicked to reactivate it over the Internet and it accepted it!
I imagined that the best that it would allow would be to have a long phone call to MS in Lebanon and explain that the computer was changed because the old one was fried. The only thing in common between the two was the C: drive.
Changes:
m/b from Intel to Elite with via chipset
CPU from P4 1600 to Core 2 Duo 1800
RAM from 256 Mb DDR to 512 Mb DDR2 1024 GHz FSB
I deleted the old drivers and installed the new ones. I formatted the new SAT HDD, which she will use for back-up. The only hiccup was that there was no LPT1 port but I found that her printer also had a USB port, so that was only a very minor problem. Total time required to get the thing working from virgin condition with Internet and all her applications and data: 1¼ hours! I expected it to take at least 1¼ days!!!!!!
Maybe I should badmouth MS's activation a little less!
I imagined that the best that it would allow would be to have a long phone call to MS in Lebanon and explain that the computer was changed because the old one was fried. The only thing in common between the two was the C: drive.
Changes:
m/b from Intel to Elite with via chipset
CPU from P4 1600 to Core 2 Duo 1800
RAM from 256 Mb DDR to 512 Mb DDR2 1024 GHz FSB
I deleted the old drivers and installed the new ones. I formatted the new SAT HDD, which she will use for back-up. The only hiccup was that there was no LPT1 port but I found that her printer also had a USB port, so that was only a very minor problem. Total time required to get the thing working from virgin condition with Internet and all her applications and data: 1¼ hours! I expected it to take at least 1¼ days!!!!!!
Maybe I should badmouth MS's activation a little less!
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