Quote from ntfs:
I just bought a new hd, made a clone using Acronis and noticed m$ softs need to be activated. I really don't want to go thru this each and every time I clone. Is there a way around this? Or do I just not clone excel?
tia,
nt
it will get worse before it gets better. Micro$hit is implementing that businesses pay an annual lease rather than buyign their software because "they'll need support anyway".
I have had my share of run-ins with M$hit and they refused to activate my office 2000 when I needed to rebuild my machine for the umpteemth time. That was the last time I bought a license for office from them, I happened to obtain a version of office 2000 for large businesses that does not need activation. No Offfice XP here, no Office 2003 etc.
More and more this is happening: businesses obtaining a legal license and then obtaining a work-around for the activation so they are not in shitstreet when they need to restore something and the M$hit office is not available (closed) or is creating problems.
For backing up your WPA activation of XP you may want to take a look at RockXP on this website: http://www.korben.tk. You can also find a lot of utilities on http://www.nirsoft.net/ which really shows how insecure your machine and network are.
And in case you have forgotten the login passwords of your backup that you made x years ago then you can use the offline password editor: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/
Let's be explicit here: I am not advocating anything for illegal purposes here, just a way to create a work around when you are already in the possesion of a legal license.
Enjoy
vital-analitix
PS I have replaced the standard windows logon with a OEM logon that is using hardware (security chip with biometrics and a pass-phrase - up to 256 characters) which makes the run-of-the-mill bypassing rather difficult.
