[mikell808]

I am not sure if there is a solution for this but thought I would throw it out here. Trying to clone a drive from an older Dell running XP professional to a newer dell system also running XP pro. The software needed is no longer available so the only option is to try an keep the old drive settings in tack while doing the upgrade. So the Clone seemed to work but the new system was sending a blue screen I didn't expect much more. Next step was to do a repair option setup using an XP pro OEM sp3 disk. That ran OK but now every time I try to start it I get a message saying it will not run until the OS is validated. I try to allow it to do that but the new system network card did not set up with the new installation and I can't get it to boot to anything where I can make the change. I think I have a disc that would get me access to the registry is there something I can do in there to get past this activation message? Or is there a key stroke that would open up a DOS window while its locked out from the desktop?

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Hello mikell808

Trying to clone a drive from an older Dell running XP professional to a newer dell system also running XP pro.

Not sure why you would want to have two versions of the same OS on the same HDD so is it the actual personal data on the HDD that you are wanting to copy across.

The software needed is no longer available so the only option is to try an keep the old drive settings in tack while doing the upgrade

If you are referring to drivers then you must already have them saved on the working HDD in the newer Dell so they could be copied from there.

every time I try to start it I get a message saying it will not run until the OS is validated. I try to allow it to do that but the new system network card did not set

Under normal circumstances you could do this by telephone if the computer will connect to the internet by way of the Ethernet port, if not you would need to have access to the internet by way of Wi-Fi as you could then use a USB wireless dongle type device

The OS must be validated by Microsoft or you will not be able to use it, also keep in mind that the OEM XP disk product key that is stored on the old HDD is registered with Microsoft on their database, this will be detected and then activated by Microsoft only if the product key is still being used with the original MB that it was paired with or a replacement MB that has already previously been registered with Microsoft as a replacement.

[phillpower2]

Hello mikell808

Trying to clone a drive from an older Dell running XP professional to a newer dell system also running XP pro.

Not sure why you would want to have two versions of the same OS on the same HDD so is it the actual personal data on the HDD that you are wanting to copy across.

The software needed is no longer available so the only option is to try an keep the old drive settings in tack while doing the upgrade

If you are referring to drivers then you must already have them saved on the working HDD in the newer Dell so they could be copied from there.

every time I try to start it I get a message saying it will not run until the OS is validated. I try to allow it to do that but the new system network card did not set

Under normal circumstances you could do this by telephone if the computer will connect to the internet by way of the Ethernet port, if not you would need to have access to the internet by way of Wi-Fi as you could then use a USB wireless dongle type device

The OS must be validated by Microsoft or you will not be able to use it, also keep in mind that the OEM XP disk product key that is stored on the old HDD is registered with Microsoft on their database, this will be detected and then activated by Microsoft only if the product key is still being used with the original MB that it was paired with or a replacement MB that has already previously been registered with Microsoft as a replacement.