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From: Some Guy 
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Subject: Re: Cloning a 2.5" IDE/PATA Laptop Hard drive
Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2017 08:41:35 -0500
Organization: Mixmin
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J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, why have you cloned so many from "a handful"?

We made several hundred windows-based systems with custom hardware 
during the 2000's and early 2010's.  These were "turn-key" and had 
Windoze pre-installed on them.  About half were win-98, the latter half 
being XP.  The CD's were bought in packs of 5 (System Builder) and were 
included when these systems were shipped, but I found it easier to just 
keep a master drive updated periodically with patches, customized 
settings and accessory software and just clone the drive vs trying to 
replicate that with each system build.  I know there was a sysprep tool 
that was supposed to accomplish that, but we wanted these systems to 
just boot right up the first time the customer used it, no entering in 
the license key and going out to validate itself.  Sometimes (quite 
often actually) these systems did not end up being connected to the 
internet anyways.

The hardware in these systems were updated a few times over this 
time-frame, so many of them shared exactly the same hardware 
configuration (motherboard, cpu, ram, cd drive, hard drive, video, etc). 
  So cloning the hard drive was an easy decision.

I kept a notebook of all the XP keys that went out for these systems, 
knowing practically all of them would never actually be used (ie - seen 
by a Micro$haft activation server).  From time to time when I needed to 
build an XP system for personal or in-house use, I'd just reach into 
that list and use one of those keys.  The system-builder keys are great 
because they are not tied to any specific hardware or system make / 
model like OEM keys are.

> Is that going to be either easier or better than Macrium or Acronis? (Or 
> does Hiren include one or both of those?)

Hiren's BootCD is at version 15.3 (or maybe higher?).  Previous versions 
have included Macrium Reflect 4.2.3775 and Acronis True Image 8.1.945 
(or higher). I don't know if the current / latest version still includes 
Macrium or Acronis.  Sometimes commercial stuff gets removed from 
Hiren's so different versions will contain a different mix of software. 
  You probably need to get older (maybe more desirable) versions of 
Hiren's from mirror sites or torrent.

>> Yes, a system that hasn't tried to re-validate itself in the past 120 
>> days should be in the clear to do it again, but I think the risk is 
>> too high if you can avoid it.  The risk that your product key has, for 
>> what-ever reason, been added to Micro$haft's black-list of keys.
> 
> Does XPinfo (on machines where it works!) cover this, or only compare 
> the system to how it was at (last) activation? (Or original activation?)

I think I knew that XPinfo didn't work with VLK, but I thought it did 
work with OEM licenses.  I can tell you it works with system builder and 
retail licenses, and *I think* MSDN / Technet subscriptions too.

XPinfo will tell you the current state of which components are the same 
now vs when XP was last validated (which is usually, but not necessarily 
when XP was originally installed).
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