Music Creator portability

You are allowed to install Cakewalk DAWs on more than one computer as long as only one computer is in use at a time.
 
Installing either SONAR or MC on an external drive and then connecting the hard drive to another computer will not work because the other computer will not have the necessary registry entries. In order to run a Cakewalk DAW on a PC, the DAW must be installed on the PC. It does not matter if it is installed on an internal or external drive although I would attempt to install at least the program on the system drive.
 
No current Cakewalk DAW will run on XP. The last version of SONAR that would run on XP was X2 but not X2a. The last version of MC that would run on XP was MC6 but not MC6T. The PC would have to be upgraded to at least Vista which is no longer supported or tested, or Win7, the oldest supported OS. An older version of SONAR or MC would be the easiest solution, if you have one.

 Still not sure why you would not want to use your existing SONAR license.
 
MC7 uses the same authentication process as SONAR. This means you will either need to install using C3 on the laptop or after installing on a machine not connected to the internet, you will have to perform an offline authentication. See the bottom of
http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Music%20Creator%207&language=3&help=Introduction.27.html for information about the activation process.
 

for an offline lappy/computer, you can use the off line authentication process or simply bring the computer to an internet location and authenticate the install....then carry it back to the woods.... you'll be good from that point on.