I have what I guess is an unusual situation, but one that I am surprised more people don't have a problem with;

I want to run Windows XP Pro, installed on only one hard drive on several machines.. such as when I am at home, at multiple offices etc.

As I understand the license, since there is only 1 install, this should be allowed. Never would two machines be able to run the same hard drive at any given time.

I have for years operated other Operating systems like this. It has many advantages such as only needing to buy one copy of each software package.. ie: MS Office, Visual Studio, Autocad.. etc.

Is there a way to make XP work like this?

The system configurations are not the same and XP picks up on the system change.

Thank you

Dan

No, and I do not recommend doing this. XP is purchased one license per machine, a roving HD is basically breaking this license agreement.

Originally posted by peterh:

"No, and I do not recommend doing this. XP is purchased one license per machine, a roving HD is basically breaking this license agreement.
"

I am completely confused by your logic. It is only in one machine at a time. How could this break the license agreement? It's no different then upgrading your machine.. very often.

Microsoft would like us to believe that it isn't good, but for me, it works GREAT. Think about it, wouldn't you like to be at your machine where ever you go and not have the limitations of using a notebook platform to get it, such as expense and 100 GB limited hard drive space.. etc etc. YOu don't have to worry about what file is where or which one is the latest version..

If you haven't thought about it, you should, especially if you travel to different offices/locations.

The only way this would work with XP is if all the other machines had the same hardware including CPU and memory as the machine XP was setup on.