Robert in CA wrote:
Ok but How do I resize the partitions without cloning?
Do I go into Disk Mangement on the external hd?

Right-click the partition that you want to resize and
choose Move/Resize. Drag the slider towards the left or
right to resize the partition size. Click Apply to save the
change.

Is this correct?

That sounds like the idea. Disk Management can make the partition larger.
It's the case of making it smaller, that has some limitations.
But larger is OK, until it hits the end of the disk of course.


I also don't understand how we got the Not Genuine/Invalid
Windows OS on the 8500 each time we cloned yet this didn't
happen on the 780 because it was refurbished! In essence,
the 8500 is now more like the 780 OS because I lost my Activation.

If all your disks failed to be Genuine, I'd be concerned.

It's only the cloned disk which is Not Genuine, which implies
something we're doing, is ****ing off the Genuine check.

You haven't really "lost" anything, yet, as near as I can
determine.

The reason I'm tip-toeing around the issue, is I want
to fix it. I *don't* want you phoning Microsoft a dozen
times to fix it, because we could not figure out the root
cause.

If I thought the support was on the ball enough, I'd tell
you to let them root cause it. But as far as I know, their
"normal" response is to just cut an activation code and
send you on your way. Because that takes less support time.

But in principle, they can also be asked to use their
three levels of skilled help, to find out what needs
to change in what you're doing, to keep the thing activated.

I've never lost activation yet, by doing this stuff. But
on the other hand, I try not to have RAID metadata on
disks either. Sometimes, you don't have any choice in the
matter, but at least you can do your part by not using the
RAID driver for RAID. (The Intel RST driver, supports
RAID and AHCI, and it does that, so that RAID ready disks
can be moved from AHCI operation to RAID Mirror, as an
example.) It would be Dell, shipping your 1TB disk as RAID-ready,
that may lay the groundwork for difficulty cloning.

The other possibility, is malware. I found a thread today,
where a skilled operator (Noel DP), ministered to someones
disk that was Not Genuine. He was finding a lot of
permissions errors. He crafted commands to return a
pile of such errors back to "normal", but at some point
he had to give up because there were so many things to fix.
The person he was helping, did a Repair Install, and that
seemed to tip things upright again.

We can do a Repair Install on the 780, because it's a refurb,
and the refurb DVD is really really close to a retail DVD.

The 8500 is different. The closest thing to a Repair Install,
would involve getting the Repair My Computer to work :-/
And you can see how that's going.

One of the OS releases, had an actual tool you could run
to put back baseline permissions, and that would be an
excellent thing if it existed today. But it doesn't.
I think WinXP was the last OS with a tool for that.


I realize we can make clone with #4 presently in the 8500 but
I'm not understanding your diagram and analysis but that all if
we had Microsoft support correct? Which we don't.

It's just possible, that issuing (as Administrator)

slui

will fix the Not Genuine disk. It was my understanding, that
SLIC (BIOS) activated OSes, don't have exactly the same logic
as Retail Installed OSes, and the activation is "easier".

My concern is, how many times will "slui" work (with respect to
a single key). What if "slui" stops working ?

I have no way to estimate whether it'll work, or for how
many occurrences in a row.


From what I see we have the bottom scenario were both #3 and
#4 are not genuine because they both had the message at the
end of Invalid Windows OS and Not Genuine. The root cause isn't
solved.

So where do we go from here ? I have the OS back 99% with the
exception of the backspace key and the pop-up's when I attach a
external hd but I now realize I can check disk management to see
if they truly are connected.

If you agree, I think I should re-size #3 partition and the 780's #1,
#2 hd's, then do a System Restore point, then do Mrimgs for both
computers.

Robert

Do the "slui" experiment if you get a moment to try it
on a Not Genuine disk.

And by all means, carry on with your resize operation. That
should not take long. Making partitions smaller, takes time,
because the defrag thing moves the files out of the way.
Making partitions larger, is instantaneous.

There are lots of things I'm willing to leave as festering
sores on computers. Activation isn't one of them.

It's because the topic is not documented, that we *must*
learn as much as possible about it. The end-users have to
make the manual, because no one else will.

Paul