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After Cloning AutoCAD doesn't work

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I have a peculiar problem. I made a clone of my work's HDD to a new, larger HDD (so I have a backup). When I swapped out the two drives to test the new clone, it started and loaded my Windows (XP Pro) just fine. Everything worked great...until I opened my AutoCAD 2008. It said my trial had expired. Even imputting the serial #'s again had no effect. The AutoCAD "was" a trial version that was registered with a serial key to allow full usage. I guess my question is, if the drive clone is an exact copy, what's causing the discrepancy regarding the trial period? Is it that the new drive has a different mechanical signature? (either that or the program has some sort of signature linked to the particular drive it was originally installed?)

I'm not sure how to work around this problem other than installing a new drive and resinstalling all programs and AutoCAD fresh-starting over from scratch. (which defeats the purpose of cloning). I do have backup drive images. I wonder if I tried installing the new drive from a backup drive image? Probably have the same problem but I could try it (the image is exactly the same as the clone). It's just a very annoying problem. Thx for any suggestions.

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Boot from the TI Rescue CD.
Try simulating a recovery of one of your existing backups. Select only the MBR and click Next.
On this screen, note the lower left corner there is a option to recover the "disk id". Select this item.
Now select the newer target drive to receive the restore of these two items.

After the restore. Shut down and remove any disks except for the new larger disk just restored.
Reboot and hope this fix will solve your issue.

I would like to know if this was the answer. I have a customer with several machines running autocad and it would be nice to have images of these machines and not have to go through reactivation if the hard drives fail. I did see something on Autodesk's site that suggested that somehow Autocad is keyed to information in the boot sector of the original hard drive it is installed on. Really be good if I had a definitive answer on this!!!

Thanks

The only definitive answer would be to try it.

Whether to do a disk option restore or a restore of all partitions individually, be sure and include the "Recover Disk Signature" option.

You may be interested in items 1 and 2 at this link.

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/29618