C
C J.
To start off with - I bought a 300GB Maxtor PATA 133 drive to replace an
older Maxtor 40GB ATA-133 that was the boot drive. Things went smoothly for
the first couple of days. After fixing a networking driver when I rebooted I
was told my system " underwent significant hardware changes and will have to
be reactivated" Fine - I was able to do this online.
But then there was something major wrong with my Cloned installation - still
havent figured it all out (used Maxtors Drive utilities to copy the boot
drive to the new one ) to top that all off after installing IE 7 Beta 2
recently, my system became so unstable I decided to uninstall the Beta, and
because of problems elsewhere in Windows I couldn't - and so I wound up
zero'ing out the new drive and going through the same process to get back on
track: put old boot drive back in, cloned it etc.
Now heres my problem: new Drive did well the first day it was installed on
my PC like before. I went to microsoft update - then I installed the
correct Intel networking drivers for the onboard ethernet adapter (did this
first time around on new drive without a hitch too) when I did the same
thing a 2nd time, and I rebooted I was told I had to re-activate windows
again. Only this time authentication failed because, "according to our
records this product key has been used more than 5 times " or some malarkey,
and I was given some 50 digit number and told to call microsoft and I'd be
issued a new number. I got that all straightened around. I don't understand
what the big deal was, the only changes I made were the hard drive and to
the ethernet driver. The system has same motherboard, CD_RW Drive,
Audiocard...memory etc.
But this installation is still running like ****. So I'm hoping an inplace
repair install will correct my problems, and if not I'm facing a clean
install.
After this last round with M$... I'm leary to enter the product key I was
given with the disk, figuring it will fail authentication a 3rd time.
What should I do at this point?
older Maxtor 40GB ATA-133 that was the boot drive. Things went smoothly for
the first couple of days. After fixing a networking driver when I rebooted I
was told my system " underwent significant hardware changes and will have to
be reactivated" Fine - I was able to do this online.
But then there was something major wrong with my Cloned installation - still
havent figured it all out (used Maxtors Drive utilities to copy the boot
drive to the new one ) to top that all off after installing IE 7 Beta 2
recently, my system became so unstable I decided to uninstall the Beta, and
because of problems elsewhere in Windows I couldn't - and so I wound up
zero'ing out the new drive and going through the same process to get back on
track: put old boot drive back in, cloned it etc.
Now heres my problem: new Drive did well the first day it was installed on
my PC like before. I went to microsoft update - then I installed the
correct Intel networking drivers for the onboard ethernet adapter (did this
first time around on new drive without a hitch too) when I did the same
thing a 2nd time, and I rebooted I was told I had to re-activate windows
again. Only this time authentication failed because, "according to our
records this product key has been used more than 5 times " or some malarkey,
and I was given some 50 digit number and told to call microsoft and I'd be
issued a new number. I got that all straightened around. I don't understand
what the big deal was, the only changes I made were the hard drive and to
the ethernet driver. The system has same motherboard, CD_RW Drive,
Audiocard...memory etc.
But this installation is still running like ****. So I'm hoping an inplace
repair install will correct my problems, and if not I'm facing a clean
install.
After this last round with M$... I'm leary to enter the product key I was
given with the disk, figuring it will fail authentication a 3rd time.
What should I do at this point?