Possible to choose the image you wish to boot from?

I'm looking to buy TrueImage but here's what I want to do. I want to be able to create three seperate images (see below) and choose which one I want to boot from. I would store any personal data and these 3 images on a seperate harddrive.

My real question is, do I need to buy three seperate XP licenses or am I staying legit since only one instance of the image will be used. I don't mind waiting a minute or two for the image to be loaded out if I can benefit from a clean machine with each boot if I choose to.

Image 1:
Windows XP & my graphics software only. No Virus scanner installed to bog down performance. Only the bare minimum.

Image 2:
WIndows XP & my Audio & Music software. No Virus Scanner installed. Only the bare minimum.

Image 3:
Windows XP with Virus/Firewall package for Surfing the Internet.

 

It's one license per computer. Before you can boot from one of those three scenarios, you realize that you have to Restore/Recover whichever one you want to the hard drive first? And this would remove whatever was existing on the hard drive - unless you plan to have three separate hard drives and change them out as needed.

 

You can't boot from an image. You can maintain those images and restore as often as you wish. Restore times will vary depending on the version of ATI and GBs of data restored.

 

Ralphie -

I would be saving all data onto a seperate harddrive. Wiping out the contents of the existing drive with the Windows operating system doesn't make any difference to me.

My concern is really with the licensing and avoiding having virus scanning software & software firewalls killing processor speeds when I'm trying use graphics and video software. On the images with a audio and video software, there will be no need to access the internet and if I need to, I'll take the risk and use Windows firewall to grab updates since it usually only takes about a minute to grab them.

I do appreciate your reply!

 

An interesting approach indeed, rescherrer. A couple of minutes restore will yield perhaps a few hours of the fastest performance your machine is capable of.

 

To make the switching as fast and easy as possible you should have TI installed in each image, but being a single computer you would still be legal.

 

Hi rescherrer

From XP EULA
1.1 Installation and use. You may install, use, access, display and run one copy of the Software on a single computer, such as a workstation, terminal or other device ("Workstation Computer").

I think that technically you would fall outside the wording of what is permitted by the license in that you would be installing more than one copy.

If it were me though, I wouldn't have any problems sleeping at night as I think it would be reasonable as I would only be able to run one incarnation of the OS at any one time. My personal view is that this is within the spirit of the license, but not within the wording of the license.

F.

 

I don't think so. He would have one installation of TI included in several images representing different states of the system partition. That's something anyone who creates regular system partition images (and keeps them on storage) has. It would be a series of system images with different applications installed - a most common situation in standard TI usage. I have many system partition images on my backup drive and TI is in each of them.

 

My other concern would be as I'm merrily alternating between images namely the one I want to access the internet with... Windows update will want to grab updates from Microsoft (the same would be true for the Virus Protection software.)

If... as I alternate between the images... will it set off a flag at Microsoft or McAfee saying... "hmmm, why did machine xxxxxxxxxxx download the same XP Hotfix or Security Update 10 times in two weeks? Looks like someone is using an illegal copy of our software..."

 

I can tell you how to solve the McAfee situation ... don't use it, use AVG or any other free antivirus. There are a few good free ones out there.

For the Microsoft one, you only need the updates on the drive that goes on the Internet. On the other two turn off the Automatic updates feature. In fact since they don't go on the Internet, they will not get the update notice even if it was set to automatic.

 

It would seem you could achieve your goal by a simple reboot and

1. have your boot menu to offer three different hardware configurations where you could pre-select (once) which services start for that specific configuration.

2. Use a shareware program Advanced StartUp Manager which could control which programs run at startup based on your selection of 3 different configurations. Each configurtion would only start the startup programs needed for that particular endeavor. This program can be tried free for 30 days otherwise $19.

http://www.rayslab.com/?from=Programs&product=ASUM

Your normal TrueImage backups would always contain all of the above.
------------------------------------------------------

I do use the different hardware configurations and that works well.
I just ran across the Advanced Startup Manager(ASM) and have just begun my trial period. It looks like it would do the job--if you want to spend the money. In this scenerio, you would always be using a current system with the current updates except you would control which services start via the hardware configuration and which startup programs run via the ASM.

I already have one extra hardware configuration which has almost all services stopped and I hope to use the ASM to strip away all startup programs (currently stopping by a selective msconfig option). This makes it nice and easy to install new progams into a clean environment via a simple reboot.

 

Hi bVolk,

not sure if you are disagreeing that I thought he was breaking the license, or if you are disagree that I thought he was within the spirit of it.

Anyhow, your point is interesting. Is there really a difference between a system installation on a disk which is currently unused because another on the same machine is booted at that time; and a backup images on the same machine of one of the system partitions?

Having multiple installations on a machine is by definition outside the license as I interpret it (because it is "Installed"), but I would find it difficult to believe backups are illegal. One for the lawyers

F.

 

Hello there foghorne, I apologize.

From the first post on (!) I have been under the wrong assumption that it was an Acronis license question, as they usually are. Though I was surprised at your quoting that single install limitation. A strong coffee this morning made me finally understand the problem.

Sorry for confusing the issue everyone.

 

Now I'm confused.

F.

 

The point I was trying to make was that there wouldn't be any breach of the Acronis license, since TI would never be used on more then one single computer. But that wasn't what rescherrer was asking, he was thinking of the XP license.

Any sense that you may have found in my replies was therefore purely incidental.

 

incidental or coincidental, you raised an interesting point about the legitimacy of storing multiple image backups of a system partition versus hosting multiple bootable system partitions all based on a single license. A lot of this comes down to common sense, despite the wording of the EULA.

I read recently that lawyers were tying themselves in knots over the MS Virtual PC OS images. There is huge confusion over whether one can create more than one (VPC) image of a licensed operating system. This is very close to the situation described above. Someone who tried to find a definitive answer to the VPC issue got a different story depending on who happened to answer the phone at Microsoft. One of the key benefits of VPC of course is being able to boot into different configuration of the same OS.

At the end of the day I think it is about the spirit of what is meant by licenses and I guess we all need to make our own judgements.

F.