Why didn't this work?

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I was recently on a trip tp Asia lasting several weeks. I bought
bought a new 80Gig hard drive, and re-installed XP Home and SP2. I
had been advised to make an image, both after installing XP/SP2 and
after all the various programs that i'd be using.

All seemed to be well, but I'd left I discovered that my external DVD
burner was now seen as a CD-ROM, not even a CD burner. Of coursse I
had my images to fall back on; no use, the problem came with SP2 and
it was in the image too. Since I had brought the original 30 Gig h/d
with me in an external case I decided on emergency field surgery.
Using only a Swiss Army knife I removed the new drive and replaced it
with the old one which still had XP on it, a copy of XP that had
worked with the burner and hadn't been used since I'd removed it. I
booted up and was well pleased to see the Welcome screen, at least
that meant I'd got the connections right, and it IS possible in a Sony
to hook it up wrong, how's that for design engineering? However, my
relief was short lived. The next thing was a warning, something like:
"Windows is unable to authenticate this installation of XP."
follwed by a shut down.

Now why didn't that work? No software had been added or deleted, the
drive was unscrewed, set aside, then replaced. I know about
activation, this copy had been activated, it had been in use until I
put the new drive in before setting off. How did XP "know" that the
drive had been removed and rinstalled?

David
.

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