WinXP reactivation problem

RapierX

Hi lads,

I'll be as brief as possible here. I took my uncles hard drive off him to plug into my much much faster pc to scan it for viruses and spyware. Toshiba 1ghz celeron 64MB ram versus athlon 3500 1gig corsair.

It found 2 viruses and good few bits and pieces of spyware/adware but overall not bad for a guy who is semi pc literate.

I'm running winXP pro, his hard drive has winXP home edition on it. I selected his hard drive as boot device and got stuck at the reactivate windows screen. The icons wouldnt load so all i was left with was the background colours and text. Clicking the unloaded icons didnt work as did predicting where they might actually be hiding (anyone who ever used 56k will understand).

It was late at night and he was due to collect it the next morning so i assumed it would probaly be ok on his system but alas no same problem.
both are legit copies of windows with seperate keys. Did putting his home edition hd into my xp pro system corrupt something? I know reinstall is an option but hes an ancestry nut with lots of family trees and rare old photos on his hd. He hadnt the foresight or knowledge to save important info onto discs.
Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated.

odie

Windows activation is tied to the hardware it was activated on. If this changes significantly, as in your case, it will ask to reactivate. Better to check it for viruses spyware etc as a secondary or slave drive.