2 identical OS on same machine.

[nob1]

I have a disc caddy on my new machine, which takes 4 HDD. My plan is to have 4 bootable HDD each with a different OS installed. (well 3 OS actually) Each disc will cover a different aspect of the work I do. Except one which will only be for games. My problem is: can I install the same OS (from the same DVD) on two different discs and will Microsoft activate both OS as they are both installed on the same machine. I have performed a trial on and old machine with Windows 7 on one disc and XP on another - worked perfectly. Its the activation of 2 copies of OS on the one machine that is the problem. Oh I've just realised this isn't really a HDD problem!!! Which Forum should it be in???

Art Clarke

Arthur Clarke

 

[edfair]

Probably better on the windows XP forum where there is more XP support. It can be done but I can't remember the details of any issues.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[vacunita]

I think you should be fine. Its the same machine, so same hardware. So no reason it won't validate.

As long as only one instance of it is running at a time, you won't even be breaching EULA.
All should work as expected.


----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[firewolfrl]

ok first things first..you need to make one XP OS that is setup the way you want it....and clone it


then you need to do some stuff to the windows 7 OS

you also need a good boot manager

read my post on this thread

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1574345

For the Boot manager I recommend Bootit NG:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm

This site is worth its weight in gold

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/index.html

if you do this right...every OS will boot and see itself as C:\ drive

good luck

 

[goombawaho]

Seems to me what you REALLY need is to get one installation running and activated and updated. Then use Ghost or Acronis to take an image of that installation and put it on an external drive.

Then use the cloning utility to suck the image off the external drive and onto each of the target drives sequentially, thus creating 3 or 4 or however many exact copies of the O.S. - each thinking they are the only one in the universe because they are on separate hard drives.

 

[edfair]

I did it with partition magic and the boot manager included with it.

I also included an extended partition that could be seen by all OS installations for sharing and backup purposes. Anything in any installation that needed backup was put on the additonal drive.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[nob1]

Thanks for the help chaps - just waiting for the Samsung F3's to arrive.

Arthur Clarke

 

[firewolfrl]

ugh! partition magic does not work well with anything newer then XP...it will not run on Windows 7 and it will show a disk sector error because of the newer NTFS file system that Vista and anything newer uses.

I have used Partition Manager and that has worked ok

I use Acronis products and I am happy with the clone results with them (I own several)

you might look in google and look for
hiren's boot cd
some companies have copyright issues with it so there for I will not post a link for it

but it will have all you need to clone

 

[firewolfrl]

just a final note on partition magic...it will try to fix the windows 7 disk and it will make it unbootable

 

[nob1]

I now have two 64 bit Windows 7 running on different HDD.
Both were loaded from the same DVD, used the same reg key and were activated automatically. A third windows 7 (32bit) is running on a third HDD. That's as far as I have got. But I intend to put XP on a forth HDD on the same machine.
The disk caddy makes it easy to swap HDD.

The 64 bit disks cover games and Video and image manipulation. The 32 bit does email and surfing (can run flash player on 32 bit). Haven't decided what to do with the XP disk yet. 2 of the disks are 1 terabyte Samsungs (F1) which I have used for some time and found them to be ultra reliable and the 3rd is an F3 which is on test.