Robert Meek wrote: >... But what I really need to know is if they are different >for each one of multiple copies of installed and incensed OS's. That is, if >you and I are both using Vista Ultimate with all the same updates, etc., are >the Product IDs and GUIDs different on yours as they are for mine?
I compiled and ran the Jvcl JvComputerInfoExDemo example test program and got different GUID's and product ID's for WinXP 32 bit SP3, WinXP 64 bit SP1, WinVista 32 bit SP1 and WinVista 64 bit SP1 all installed in separate logical partitions on the same 500 GB hard disk as one might expect. I didn't experiment using Sun's Virtual Box VM under Ubuntu Linux which is also installed and where the Linux Grub boot manager boots the Vista boot manager that in turn handles "earlier versions of Windows" (i.e. XP). I don't know what happens when a service pack is installed by Windows Update, since all are up to date. >According to what I was told, every copy of a Windows OS that is sold, >installed, and registered, makes a registry entry of these two values, and >NEVER are they the same, even if two copies of the same OS are installed on >the same machine, for example on a separate HD, and/or are owned by the same >user! This is what I need to verify! I have the 5x OS installation described above on two networked machines on a gigabit LAN with the same motherboards, graphic cards, a supplementary SATA controller for external disks, and with the motherboard's SATA ports handling four hot-swappable AHCI SATA server quality disks as well as a DVD. OS's are kept separately each in its own partition on the first and fastest SATA. Data, libraries and programs each have their own disks and partitions. The non-OS disks can be swapped or cloned between the two machines without complaints from any of the OS's. Cloning an OS disk with its 5 OS's and popping it into another machine has no effect under the two WinXP's where they boot normally, but both Vistas (Ultimate) complain bitterly and demand re-validation via the Internet within 3 days. So it appears that MS does not check in quite the same way for XP and Vista. Cloning an OS disk to an identical model disk but with a different serial number on the same machine produces no complaints from either Vista or XP, so obviously a change of OS disk serial number alone is not sufficient to upset Vista's validation scheme presumably because the graphic card id, the bios id, the MAC address and the rest are unchanged. If a user needs to switch OS's, languages or hardware dependent features without using one of the multi-national versions of Windows or if one needs different OS's for 32 and 64 bits for software development, then it would appear that he'll need several license files etc. one for each OS. Irwin Scollar __________________________________________________ Delphi-Talk mailing list -> [email protected] http://lists.elists.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/delphi-talk
