Does TI 2011 affect application copy protection ?
I used TI to clone my HD to another drive of exactly the same kind. Afterwards, I removed the old HD and booted Windows7 from the clone. Everything seems to be fine, except for two applications that had lost my registration details, so ran as unregistered. The files were all there and reflected changes made just before I cloned the drive. Suspecting the apps' copy-protection scheme, I contacted the vendor, who suggested that Acronis might have disturbed the registration inmformation in some way. I'd be surprised if that were true for a disk clone, but I thought I'd check here. Any comments would be appreciated. I did the clone from an Acronis boot CD.
TAI,
Pete K
Thanks for reponding; its helpful to know that developers are using such techniques. Personally, I think that it is a bad idea to do this if it means that it affects the behavious of applications after a HD has been cloned using binary imaging. In my case, the two applications are RightNote and Compare Advance. RightNote is a bit like MS OneNote only much better; Compare Advance is a disk/folder compare/backup utilitity. These are both brilliant utilities that I would hate to be without.
Cheers.
Pete K
Peter, I'm not familiar with either of those apps. Roxio is notorious for wrapping itself around the hardware.
PeteK,
I am not positive that the cloning operation is supposed to replicate the disk signature of one disk to another. The backup/restore process does clearly offer you this possibility. By making sure you restore the disk signature, you avoid certain software copy protection issues, but not necessarily the one you are facing.
Pat,
Thanks for your comments. In the past, I've always used the clone process to backup my drives. Afterwards, I boot to the new HD and retain the old (as the backup). This is the first time I've noticed any operational differences after the clone. I suppose that means that this is the first time I've come across programs that use the disk signature, but I'm certain that previous cloning operations have included these two programs. Perhaps it is because these are later releases (or maybe its a windows7 thing; i upgraded from xp recently). My main concern was that the clone process had not been 100% successful when I observed this odd behaviour. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the clone did work and that the two applications do use some fields that are not preserved by the cloning process. I can understand the need to copy protection schemes, but I don't like any mechanism that ties you to a physical HD.
Pete, if you are still around, look up the ms kb. You can change your new HDD volume serial number to match the old one. this "fixes" a lot of apps.
A disk mode restore will include the disk signature. That won't necessarily mean that a restore won't affect some copy-protected-hardware-keyed licenses -- it depend son how they work. Most such software, if it is working correctly won't deactiviate or at worst, you can reactivate by contacting the software maker and letting them know what you did--so long as you are within the terms of your license, they must allow you to reactivite -- even if it's Microsoft.