Vista doesn’t allow cloning, an activation horror story
By Jonathan Schlaffer
We’ve all heard the stories and even called them rumors at some points but it’s not just stories and rumors, these situations are real, very real, almost too real. Many have complained about the new Vista licensing scheme, I’m not going to defend it but until today my thoughts were “how bad could it be?†It’s bad, it’s real bad.
Microsoft got the brilliant idea that any copy of Vista can only be transferred once provided it is uninstalled from the old system and there is no way to deactivate your serial key so that’s a strike. I don’t know exactly what Microsoft considers to be a “transfer†but the system is either flawed, didn’t apply to my situation or did I say flawed?
I like fast hardware, the faster, the more memory, the better and the same applies to hard drives. I decided to upgrade my laptop’s hard drive to a 7200RPM model for increased performance and speed but slightly less battery life. Once I received the drive and the transfer kit, I happily cloned my existing Vista installation over to the new drive and prepared to install the new drive. To this point Vista was activated and functioning perfectly.
Upon powering the new drive for the first time I got an error message that \Windows\system32\winload.exe was corrupted or missing. No problem, I have my Vista DVD and the automatic repair option corrected that error. Vista booted happily and faster being quite happy with the new 5.1 performance rating of the new hard drive I went about my business for the day.
Then all of a sudden, Vista gives me a warning that “This copy of Vista is no longer Genuine, Activate Online, 3 days remaining.†Excuse me! What! It’s running on the same hardware, the only thing that changed was the hard drive and now I have to reactivate Vista, you have got to be KIDDING me!
The automatic activation failed, the reenter your product key failed so that left me with talking to Microsoft support or calling the automatic phone system. Not really wanting to talk to Microsoft, I decided to go with the automatic phone system which turned out to be not so automatic. I gave the nice “AI†my installation ID number and after all that “I’m sorry, I am unable to activate your system, you will be transferred to support.†Oh great… my worst nightmare come true.
It didn’t turn out to be a nightmare, after giving the “technician†my first six digits of the Installation ID, he gave me the new code to enter and Vista happily went about activating. It is once again genuine but the point is, after a simple hard drive transfer, I shouldn’t have been required to do ANY of that.
Vista is supposedly tied to the hardware and the only change that is supposed to invalidate it is a motherboard upgrade, I can accept that, I really can. What I cannot accept is after a hard drive upgrade only that Vista wants to reactivate, this can also happen after various driver installations.
I can only say this is stupid, really stupid, the stupidest thing I’ve ever had to put up with. Vista should take stock of your system, I don’t care if it notes the serial number of the motherboard, it should do something so that it knows it is still running on the same exact hardware and the only thing that has changed is the hard drive.
I’d like to note to Microsoft if one of their employees should come across this post, I am not happy about this, the activation system is full of bugs and how dare you release this when all these problems are present. No wonder IT departments, businesses and governments are putting the temporary kibosh on upgrading to Vista. Does Microsoft think any of them are going to put up with this when all they do is clone the hard drive, don’t think so, fix it or get out of the business but I’m guessing neither will happen.
Forgive me for saying so but this wouldn’t have happened if those up in Redmond really cared about their customers, I don’t think they care. The only thing I can praise them for is the support which was a good experience in this case that resulted in my getting my PC back but how many others have had experiences that did not go over so well.
That was just the reason I was waiting for, come October or the Leopard release or the release of new MacBook Pro models (whichever comes first) I will be getting one and dumping Vista on my laptop completely.
Unfortunately this means I won’t be able to install a new fancy SATA drive in my desktop because I can’t clone Vista over to the new drive without it deactivating. Thanks Microsoft, you put the “P†in pain, it’s appreciated.
On top of all this, it turns out my Acer laptop battery has been recalled, users of affected batteries have been advised to run off AC power until the replacement arrives “within 5 weeks,†I guess the joke is on me this time.
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on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 4:58 am
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Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
May 7th, 2007
[…] Vista can do some pretty ridiculous things but this is one that really got to me recently. I transferred Vista to a new hard drive and the only thing I thought that caused was some activation problems. I was wrong. […]
May 20th, 2007
I believe in keeping a spare hard drive that has all my data and OS (Vista) on it in case of a crash..
I bought Acronics 10.0. I tried to clone my spare drive several times
to no avail.
My hard drives were wrongly identified as SCSI in my machine in the device manager.. Lenovo is working on a patch to fix that.
I quess I will have to wait for the patch to be able to clone my spare SATA HD. MS is so afraid that someone will clone Vista and use it for two computers. The hardware would have to match or they would have all kinds of problems. I do like VISTA. Even with the drivers being very scarce.
May 21st, 2007
I bought Acronis 10.0. I tried to clone my spare drive several times
to no avail.
(I earlier misspelled Acronis.)
I do think my hard drives being identified as SCSI will raise heck during my clone activities..
Are we supposed to clear our C.MOS? I know modern programmers use CMOS for a note pad, checksum, etc. I’m not sure what problems I would have if I purge my CMOS?
It could turn this thing into a door-stop. Any ideas? thanks
June 30th, 2007
Well… I got 2 iPhones, 1 for me and 1 for my wife, now… We pluged it on iTunes at the same time, we got the message saying that we have to wait, like almost every one did, after wait all night long, I went to sleep, and at 6 am I decided to try one more time so I pluged my iPhone on the computer and BOOM! it worked!!! My wife’s phone still not working, we tryied to plug it on the iTunes around 11:00 AM, and NOTHING!!! Still inactive. Now, the next question is: HOW MANY 911 CALLS WAS RECEIVED FROM iPhone’s??? since that is the only number you can call if it is not activated. I didn’t, but yesterday, after 30 Min in the line to buy my incredible device, I saw more than one person, run out of the store and open theyr boxes, excited and just let the plastic bag, and all those litle plastic stuff that comes on the package… guess where… in the floor… that is it, they just unwrap it and use the street as garbage, again, HOW MANY CALL’S THE EMERGENCY NUMBER HAS RECEIVED FROM DOES PEOPLE?
July 1st, 2007
Andrei, a bit off topic there… we have several posts floating around about the iPhone on our sister blogs as this post has nothing to do about the iPhone or activating the iPhone but thanks all the same for the comment.
July 1st, 2007
I just got done building a Vista machine for a client.
The install went well… but… the bios display rolled badly.
I then discovered that I had too many computers on one line in my lab.
When I got done the device manager again identified my SATA HD as a SCSI. (I had blamed Lenovo earlier, sorry IBM)
When I tried a test DVD write, it warned me that it will take seven days. MS, are you watching? as this is a little hint.
I guess I should of installed Nero to take care of that bug. Does Nero 7 work with Vista? I still like Vista and was glad to have fired Norton. It got so bad in XP that I could not E-mail a basic JPEG as it would time out and give me an error code.. Plus that machine probably had every spy/snoop worm on the planet. I loved composing a letter in word and knowing I had key logger that would record every keystroke and send it to God knows where. You can’t clear out malware as the registry will re-install them with every load. IE7 throws unsolicited E-mail in the garbage can, where they belong.
Happy Computing.
July 3rd, 2007
I have cloned my hard drive about a month ago, I was told that the software wasn’t activated too, I decided to try to reactivate it using the internet I had no problem, my only worry is if it will only let me upgrade the hard drive that one time. Microsoft should fix the problem and stop being such a tight ass company.
July 4th, 2007
I also just had this same issue. I cloned my hard drive, had to repair the install and then was asked to reactivate. Same problem too! Wouldn’t reactivate (kindly asked if I wanted to buy another Vista Ultimate license key - no way!), and so I had to talk to a tech person. Other than being asked multiple times about whether this was installed on more than one computer, the process went quickly and I am back up and running. Microsoft, if you read this, PLEASE back off on how strict your activation is…it is a real pain for those of us who are legitimate, legal users who upgrade hardware regularly!
August 14th, 2007
I found that using the unix command dd I can clone a vista drive without any hassle. in fact I have used it to clone a Vista/XP dual boot.
this can be easily done using a Linux live CD - e.g. Ubuntu - and a quick web search will tell you everything you need to know about dd (it is a single command)
August 16th, 2007
Gah, add me to the list. Used Acronis 10 to switch over from an old slow IDE to a swanky new SATAII drive (Acronis rocks! Wish I’d bought this years ago). I had to do the repair same as you lot, but it succeeded where Ghost 2003 failed.
Up pops the activate thing, so it sounds like I’ll have to call MS too.
Mine’s an OEM copy, and the question is, will I have to pay £40 (GBP) + VAT to activate?
August 30th, 2007
Just went through the exact same thing. Got a new HD for my laptop. Used ghost to create an image of the existing drive, install new drive and copy the image over, boot up and looks great except needs to be activated.
The strange thing for me is the first time I tried to activate it failed so I called support and while on the phone with support I tried again and it worked!
October 17th, 2007
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October 22nd, 2007
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December 24th, 2007
[…] larger hard drive (it works best when its both). And, sometimes after cloning, there can be activation issues as well which I have encountered in the […]
February 12th, 2008
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