Robert in CA wrote:
The problem with the shutdown on Macrium is that it shuts down Macrium and
reboots. Although this time I removed the CD and it gave me an option of shutting
down or rebooting. It didn't do that with #4 hd maybe because I left the CD in?

Possibly. I haven't really studied the logic, to see if
there's a pattern. All I know is, I have five CDs or so,
and at least some of them offer a shutdown. And they all
work the same way, in terms of reading in the .wim file (350MB or so)
at boot time and storing that information as the drive letter
X: as a RAMDisk. That's how the OS is able to continue working
on the Macrium CD, even though you've pulled the CD from the
tray. It's cached as drive letter X: and lives in the RAM.
When the power goes off, all traces of Macrium in the RAM
disappear.


I already removed #3 hd and put the 1TB back in the 8500. I'm not understanding
what you mean by boot from CD and clone over? If you mean clone the 1TB hd
that's what we've been trying to do all this time but the external hd's it won't connect.

One reason for the enclosure to not connect, would be if the drive controller
has a size limit. Now, I have an enclosure with the same chip, and I think
it will do at least a 6TB drive. Or maybe it was tested with an 8TB.

Since your 1TB is back in the 8500, you're free at this point to be
playing with the enclosure and trying various things. The only warning I
have, is to use Safely Remove before unplugging the enclosure and disk
under test. If no Safely Remove item appears in the tray area on the bottom
right, then that's OK, the partitions didn't mount, and there's nothing to
Safely Remove so it can be unplugged again. And switched off.

I tested my controller that has the same part number as yours (the ASMT
number). With no drive connected, mine won't respond. It doesn't say
anything about "No Media".

*******

I think your rear USB3 ports may work better with this. This is a
driver for the Intel USB3 interface, suitable for Windows 7 x64.
The driver says it's for a C216 PCH (Southbridge). You can
check in your Programs and Features, using an Administrator account,
and see whether it's already installed.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...00&oscode=w764

You can check in your Programs and Features, using an Administrator account,
and see whether it's already installed.

"Intel USB 3.0 xHCI Driver(USB3.0 driver)"

I could find one discussion thread, where a user notices the front two
USB3 ports work better than the back two USB3 ports. Which is a deviation
from how it normally works. The USB3 ports should have blue tabs on them
to denote Superspeed.

Summary:

1) Investigate driver situation. See if Programs and Features already
has that driver. Install it, if you cannot find any other reference to it.

2) Try the front USB3 port with the enclosure. The documentation for the
C216 chipset, draws no distinction between ports 1,2,3,4, but the user
found a difference, which is "unusual".


I have no idea what to do, everything was going according to plan until this not
genuine OS came from no where and screwed and it hasn't been the same since.
We were nearly finished when this happened. I don't know what to do if the external
won't connect, its beyond me and I have been connecting/ disconnecting allot and
changing allot of hd's and trying to keep it all organized at the same time. I have
labeled all the hd, static bags and boxes.

As far as I can see I'm at a standstill as far as cloning with no options because the
drives will not connect because of this Not Genuine OS issue despite being licensed.
It did affect something which is why nothing will connect now. I'm leery of going into
the DOS prompt for the very reasons you gave. I could make matters worst. So I have
no clue as to what to do.

Microsoft is ultimately responsible for Activation issues. If you use
SLUI 4 ("phone activation"), then stay on the line, a human will
be made available for activation issues. They should NOT ask for a
credit card. You can explain to them your OS was perfectly Genuine,
until this happened and not it's Not Genuine and "fix it". What they
can do at their end, is have you run SLUI as Administrator. In which
case it might resolve on its own. They can also generate an activation
code on their console, which you can use to enforce activation.

The only problem with this, is they get huffy if you do this
too many times. But they also have to remember, the hardware hash
that appears on their screen for each occurrence, is exactly
the same as before. It's not like you're copying the OS and
selling it. Each of your queries would be against the same
XPS 8500 with the same serial number equivalent.


I wasn't having any problems up until #3 and that message. It totally came from no
where so I have no idea how to proceed. If all was well I would say lets finish cloning
and then go back and adjust the partitions on the drives.

Robert

I explained that one source of "Not Genuine", is a time clock which
is off by years. As for any other reasons, there is no documentation,
and what we rely on, is one Microsoft MVP and his impression of
how it works. The story is necessarily thin on details. It's
because of this uncooperative nature, that

MICROSOFT HAS TO FIX THIS

Only Microsoft can cut an activation code. I can't debug the
root cause from here. It could (remote possibility) be related
to a RAID setting, but at this distance, my microscope just
doesn't work that well. And I don't know if the activation
console of the "helper" at Microsoft, includes a detailed
analysis of why the thing is Not Genuine. Their task is to
evaluate your forthrightness, cut you a code if there
are no warning signs that anything is amiss.

If they ask for details, you can say you were "preparing
a replacement hard drive, for the original", which is exactly
what you were doing.

Paul