Here is some good information for people using Shadow Copy and Windows XP. You can avoid having to reactivate XP by simply copying a file from your Windows directory and saving it on a USB stick, floppy drive, or CD. When you first activated Windows, XP creates a file called “WPA.DBL” and stores it in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory.

Open Windows Explorer and click Tools>Folder Options

Click the view tab, select the following options

Go to the Windows\System32 folder and copy the wba.dbl file and save it a CD, floppy, or USB drive.

Now you can use Shadow Copy to copy the OS to another drive. Once it is done, boot into safe mode.

Click yes that you know you are in safe mode

Open Windows Explorer and go to the Windows\system32 folder, rename the exsisting file to wba.old and paste the saved file back into the folder.

Reboot and you do not need to reactivate windows.

Remember that this will only work if you use the WPA.DBL file on the same computer that it was originally activated on. If you install XP on a different machine and try to copy the WPA.DBL file there, it won’t activate. Basically, XP looks at the hardware of the computer to create a unique profile for just that one computer. If you change the hardware to many times, it will also not work as activation looks for hardware changes as well. This should easily work for a single drive change though.

Shadow Copy is a simple program that copies all files from one place to another. Other than usual file managers, such as Windows Explorer, it copies all files including locked and open files. This is made possible by using Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Services (VSS).

Today we are going to go over Shadow Copy. Locate the Shadow Copy icon on your desktop.

Start Shadow Copy and you will be presented with the following screen:

You will need to enter the source drive, the files you want to copy and the destination. In this example, we are going to copy all the files. You can limit the files being copied by entering in a file name (test.txt), the start of a file name (t*.*), or an extension (*.txt).

Once you click start, it will create the shadow and start copying the files. You can see the progress in the bottom bar.

Once the copy process is done, it will state how many files and the total size that was copied to the new drive.

Now you will need to set the partition active. Right click on My Computer and select Manage.

Then you need to go into Disk Management and find your drive you copied the data to. Right click on it, set it to active and you are all set. Shut the machine down, remove the old drive and boot up with the new one.

Tips:

* You also might need to set a new Disk ID using DriveImage XML.
* You will probably have to reactivate Windows and some other copy-protected programs.

Automate Shadow Copy

Shadow Copy can be run from the command prompt, batch or task scheduler. The available switches are:
Switch Description
/s copy subdirectories
/j parse junctions
/i ignore errors
/y overwrite existing files
/r overwrite read-only files

It’s free!

Since we do not charge for Shadow Copy, we do not provide any support for it. If you have problems with VSS, please check the DriveImage XML documentation and the DriveImage FAQ. If you want to boot from a copied drive, also check these resources. If nothing helps please check online.