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#1370
Does Windows 98 still require a purchased product key?
Does Windows 98 still require a purchased product key?
Wenda, There's a lot of helpful info here. I like your "imaging' practice too. I'm mainly a "cloner", always having a couple of cloned HDD's on the shelf in the event of intrusions (malware, etc, that's too time-consuming to clean up) or in the event of a "user" error... me . I haven't gotten into the imaging part much but I want to get proficient with that soon.
I've only had a little time with 8 at a demo setup in a store. As mainly a Desktop/Laptop guy, I may not have the need for 8 in the foreseeable future since I don't own any of the modern mobile devices but that may change down the road.
I've picked up a lot of useful info in this thread, in the event that I feel compelled to switch to 8(.1). It's good to know that a 3rd-party install may not be necessary (Classic Shell, etc) to get 8.1 to be useable on a Desktop but my plan is to stick with 7 as long as possible, since it's by far the best Windows OS that I've seen for my home Desktop/Laptop use.
That's probably a skewed pov though, since I went from XP to 7 without a Vista experience to compare that with 7.
One of the reasonc for activation wasn't just to fight piracy in general as far as illegal dupes getting out but you could easily install each Legacy version on countless machines with only one product key that came with the floppy set or cd(s) at the time. PLUS! editions of 9x as well as ME and 2000/NT would see extra disks or floppies included. Those were for additional Windows components and network resource disks back then.
As far as must connect to account set up online to play game installed on local pc it gets a bit tiresome! If you put a retail disk with one Like STEAM the product key instantly activates to that one install of Windows before you can do anything to avert that part.(like needing to buy a second disk after that happened on the 7 RC). If you had already been running with one of their collection disks the duplicate key error would appear if Windows was reinstalled for any reason! You can't even perform a repair without that getting in the way! GGRRRRR... "take your ... and shove it!"
As you can see it can also be aggravating at times having spent out more then once for the exact same thing. You see that with other softwares as well where you have to be "connected online" or simply have an IE window open when going to uninstall first before performing any upgrade to repair or full clean install of Windows to prevent reaching the activation limit of 2 or 3 if the company allows for OS problems or hardware upgrades.
I always image my operating systems and important data partitions, before installing any Windows updates.
That means I only have to go back a month in the worst case scenario.
I often create an image when I install software that I'm not sure of, or that has proven to be troublesome in the past (e.g. graphics drivers ).
I have backup copies of my VMs on external HDDs.
It's difficult for me to sound unbiased when I admit I am :). I think cloning may lull people into the false belief that they have some better copy of their drive than what imaging can provide. It simply isn't true. To create a standby OS drive using imaging is really straightforward. With all due respect cloning every 6 weeks is not the way I would approach backups.
I have an image no older than 2 weeks old and will create a new one sooner if I install some new software or updates. I keep images spanning a number of months and use two 1TB ext USB3 HDDs and two imaging programs (Windows 7 native imaging and Macrium Reflect). Any one of these can be restoring to the existing drive or a brand new one in ~ 12minutes.
Thanks for the input. I'm wanting to learn more about the imaging scene but haven't gotten into it much yet.
I started the cloning action back in October '11 as a way to have a plug-play HDD in the event of an intrusion. It's paid off for me a couple of times since then when I had a couple of annoying intrusions that didn't clean up with safe-mode scans from my previous AV, so I plugged in my clone HDD and was running in a few minutes.
I also run a twice-daily Acronis backup for some specific "must-have" folders & files. That's also copied over to my Laptop.
I tried using Acronis (2011 ver) Backup/Restore, which I believe is their imaging function to another HDD. The "backup" portion of the operation ran for about 5 hrs. I'm not sure if that's typical for a 1 Tb HDD that has about 40-45% used space.
I just haven't yet spent the time with imaging but I want to get up to speed with it as I can see the advantages of that approach.
Imo, there are pros & cons to both pov's, cloning, imaging. I guess it depends on what the user's goal is, with one or the other choice.
I'd like to do both as I have a couple of spare 500Gb HDD's that aren't currently in use.
I have heard of Macrium and have read some about that product at their site. I like what I'm reading there and may try that one as an alternative to Acronis.
The Acronis cloning is simple and fast for me and provides a fast replacement in the event of a Source HDD failure or intrusion. I've also used Clonezilla a couple of times.
I was running Raid 1 for a while on my Desktop but disabled that for a couple of reasons. One was that I had an intermittent RAM issue that was causing Raid array glitches. The other reason is that Raid 1 won't offer a fast recovery in the event of intrusions as both HDD's are mirrored and will get hit with the same bug.
All good info here, as I'm a compared to 99% of the posters here in Windows/PC knowledge. I can hold up better in an "Astronomy" thread vs a Windows/PC thread :)
You might find it easier to use one of the modern automated backup and sync methods such as this one to Sync, Backup and Store your Files to the Cloud with Skydrive - Windows 7 Forums.
I've been using it for over a year without lifting a finger, or any problems. My files are all sync'd across all PC's with the same file master set available on the web.