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Re: Licensing Question
"G-Man" <g_foreman@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1C05BD88-ACE5-4FD5-9365-90D311F309A1@microsoft.com...
> My new Dell Latitude came with Vista Ultimate. I made a ghost image of
> the
> hard drive before it was ever booted in case I needed to go back to day
> one.
>
> I have two extra hard drives. I will have Flight Sim X on one and also
> use
> it for testing, and I will probably use the other for XP or Linux.
>
> I question is can I use my Vista Ultimate on more than one drive? I will
> only be using it on ONE computer.
>
> I guess the question is two fold.
>
> 1. Is it possible
>
> 2. Is it legal
>
> I have Microsoft Action Pack and can load Vista Business on the other
> drive,
> but it's easier just to ghost it back. I also hate to waste the extra
> licenses if not needed.
Of course it is possible. You could install a mobile rack and have 10 trays
containing hard drives with copies of your 'out of the box' ghost image, and
each one would boot up just fine without requiring activation. Dell may
have included some ways to trip you up, but I've only found one such barrier
with my Compaq desktop system - it is a minor inconvenience. The legality
depends on the license agreement, which of course is always trumped by the
governmental laws pertaining to your location. No one can give you a
definitive answer on the legality unless they study those laws.
I'm happy to see that someone else has had the foresight to create an 'out
of the box' image of their hard drive. That makes it so easy to figure out
problems with various hardware or software packages that are not as Vista
compatible as they claim. I've tried Compaq's process using the recovery
partition to restore the system to 'out of the box' conditions. It is
close, but definitely not identical to what I get from my Ghost image.
Note that the DOS version of Ghost may not properly restore the Vista Master
Boot Record. Mine doesn't. I used a DOS freeware named MbrWizD.exe to save
and restore the MBR.
-Paul Randall
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