activate windows??

used workstation 9.1 and universal restore and made image of hard drive on my dell along with a bootable cd. I took this to a compaq machine copied it on the hard drive and everything went ok. But when I booted up the compaq I get message, this copy of windows must be activated. I can not get past the logon screen. The dell machine os was windows xp pro and the compaq was windows xp home. I was told this could be done. Am i doing something wrong?
Thanks

 

Did the workstation you first made the image on have a activated copy of Windows Pro, otherwise the activation need will also be transferred.

 

Yes the dell was up and running with windows xp pro that had been ativated.

 

Hello olddog,

Thank you for using Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that after restoring you have another copy of Windows on another computer. Thus the new copy must be activated accordingly to Microsoft License Policy.

If you have any other questions or encounter any problems please feel free to contact us again.

Thank you.
--
Oleg Churkin

 

When your OS booted in a new machine enviorment it detected the changes and assumed (correctly) a new machine. So the generated ID did not match and a activation was required. Just follow through whith their dialog and call the reactivation number supplied.

You should probably use the original key code from the machine you are installing, so it doesn't conflict with you other machine, if still active.

When activating, using the auto system it very slow and redundant, and will probably fail in the middle, when going through the menus, press 0 for your choice, so you will eventually get a live operator.