Strange Reactivation!

[Lost Soul]

I recently had to change my video hardware acceleration to basically NONE.
When I rebooted, I had to reactivate. It gave me three days, so I fixed up
my video problem then reactivated.

My question is, why did this happen. According to what I found on the web,
this should not have occurred as I've not added or changed anything else at
all on the XP (sp2) system.

Curious.

 

[Chuck]

Evidently you ran afoul of the of the hardware detection scheme.
XP thought you had changed the video card, and the total number of changes
tripped a change counter. (A guess from the beta hardware test days!)

 

[Lost Soul]

Hi Chuck. I understand what you are saying and being an MS guy for over 25
years I realize that a "# of changes" triggers the re-activation.

"But", this is the "Only" change/addition I've made in about 9 months. And
it was a hardware acceleration change with the "Same" vid card! In a chat
with MS re-activation center, they said it should not have happened, and
other NGs and blog sites that I've chatted in say the same thing.

Having said the above, in one NG that I was chatting in, a member suggested
that if I've changed the vid acceleration more than three times, XP believes
an actual change has occurred. If memory serves, I beleive I may have done
this!

The only other thing that I can think of is that when I first built this
system I had a built in vid card. As this is a multi-media video editing
system, I wasn't happy with the vid card so I bought another one (about 9
months back). When I installed the new one (along with more ram and a much
bigger disk)I had to re-activate. This I udnerstand and accept as being the
law.

I did so and since then all was well.

Perhaps changing the vid acceleration caused XP Pro to think a new card was
installed (or was removed and regressed back tothe original) as you suggest.

Anyway, not a biggy just curious.

Perhaps one for the books that others may like to be aware of.

Cheers.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

There are a lot of urban legends about activation, none of which are true.
When you change a hardware characteristic such as a video card a flag is set
for that hardware characteristic. That flag remains set until the next
reactivation. While it is set the hardware characteristic can be changed
many times with no further effect. That means if you change the video card
the flag for that hardware characteristic is set and stays that way no
matter how many more times you change the video card. You could swap a
dozen different video cards in and out and it would not make any further
difference.

What does happen though is that the activation files can become corrupt or
the dlls to become unregistered causing the reactivation process to start
without any apparent logical explanation. This has happened with nothing
more than a driver update to some Vista users.

The fact is that things sometimes do go wrong and have to be fixed. Nothing
more.

 

[smlunatick]

There are a lot of urban legends about activation, none of which are true.
When you change a hardware characteristic such as a video card a flag is set
for that hardware characteristic.  That flag remains set until the next
reactivation.  While it is set the hardware characteristic can be changed
many times with no further effect.  That means if you change the video card
the flag for that hardware characteristic is set and stays that way no
matter how many more times you change the video card.  You could swap a
dozen different video cards in and out and it would not make any further
difference.

What does happen though is that the activation files can become corrupt or
the dlls to become unregistered causing the reactivation process to start
without any apparent logical explanation.  This has happened with nothing
more than a driver update to some Vista users.

The fact is that things sometimes do go wrong and have to be fixed.  Nothing
more.














- Show quoted text -

I previous had a reactivation when I just changed the video card
drives. Seems to require reactivation is the activation change
counter tend to be changed when a motherboard "device" changes (video
card may change a setting with its drivers.)

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I don't think it is a counter. It is a flag. Normally if you have changed
the video card, further video card changes make no difference until after
the next reactivation. I'm not saying it can't happen, but when it does it
is due to the way the algorithm was written but due to something else.

There are a lot of urban legends about activation, none of which are true.
When you change a hardware characteristic such as a video card a flag is
set
for that hardware characteristic. That flag remains set until the next
reactivation. While it is set the hardware characteristic can be changed
many times with no further effect. That means if you change the video card
the flag for that hardware characteristic is set and stays that way no
matter how many more times you change the video card. You could swap a
dozen different video cards in and out and it would not make any further
difference.

What does happen though is that the activation files can become corrupt or
the dlls to become unregistered causing the reactivation process to start
without any apparent logical explanation. This has happened with nothing
more than a driver update to some Vista users.

The fact is that things sometimes do go wrong and have to be fixed.
Nothing
more.














- Show quoted text -

I previous had a reactivation when I just changed the video card
drives. Seems to require reactivation is the activation change
counter tend to be changed when a motherboard "device" changes (video
card may change a setting with its drivers.)

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Correction: Last line should read, "is NOT due to the way the algorithm was
written but due to something else."

 

[Lost Soul]

I DIDN'T change the Video Card just recently! All I did was change the VIDEO
ACCELERATION!.

With all conversation going back and forth, all I wanted to know was why?

Algorithmic Babble and "Activation Files" being corrupt is purely
speculation and quite frankly a "Load of Bunk"!!!

I had a very simple question (to re-iterate): Why; when I change the "Video
acceleration" on a vid card that has been in the system for about 6-9months
cause XP go get all ^*^#*^*&^ (that would be FOO-BARRED).

To be even more accurate, I've changed the vid acceleration of "5" (yup
that's five) different systems (5 times each) in the last few days and never
had this issue on those systems. I even (on 2 systems) changed the vid card,
changed the vid res yada yada yada. No problemo!

All this banter about this and that doesn't answer the underlying question.

But I do appreciate reading about all the "Techno-Hype" about which no-one
seems to be able to give a reasonably delineative answer, with the exception
of course from "Chuck". At least he suggested that the "Scheme Failed" from
the BETA DAYS. Right or wrong, at least he took a stand and suggested a
"Possible" cause.

He certainly didn't chew up the NG with a bunch of "Bungh"!

Anyway thanks to all for the great bedtime stories.

 

[Nju Vizdat]

dont no who you are, but seems yo are mad. i had same issue and nonseemd to
answer fo me.

if you hav an anser, plese let me kno as am having same issue but not now i
got it fixed.

Nju Vizdat, thankyou

 

[Lost Soul]

Hi Nju. No I'm not mad, I just can't believe that this NG has a bunch of
folks trading (and wasting) space chatting about nothing they no anything
about.

Thanks for the question (no-one else asked).

Anyway, not a definative solution, but here's what Nvidia Corp told me (and
of course, noone asked which vid card I had!!!).

My vid card supports "Cloning". Essentially what this does is allow me to
"Clone my video card" so that I can use my desktop apps etc (on my video
monitor) and watch ( or view something else - for example a video movie) on
by LCD HDTV. Apparently, when I change the videod resolution "On my
desktop", it causes XP to think that I had TWO more video cards ADDED to my
system. One was at TV resolution (basically 640x480 - which supports PAL and
NTSC video) and the "Desktop Card" at 1280x1024.

Now this is what Nvidia tells me and I actually duplicated it on my system
this afternoon. So Nvidia appears to have had the answer and seems to be
right.

This maybe the cause in "My Situation". But at least it makes sense and
thanks to the powers that be, someone seems to have it right.

BTW, I made the calls to Nvidia based on other blogs and NGs with a comment
from Chuck (earlier in the NG chat) that had similar discussions and then of
course calling Nvidia (which were quite helpful I might add).

I don't know if this will help, but it seemed logical and reasonable to me.

 

[Twayne]

Hi Nju. No I'm not mad, I just can't believe that this NG has a bunch

of folks trading (and wasting) space chatting about nothing they no
anything about.

....

I haven't followed the thread, but your comments on the system looking
like it has more video cards than before (set clone, probably had none
prior to that) is logical and could trigger a reactivation.

As for the blatherskites, they're pretty common on this group lately;
well, the last few months actually. It's silly I agree and given time,
once people wise up to them they will go away. A couple weeks of
lurking pretty quickly identifies them; actually only a couple days
identifies a lot of them. When they can't give an answer to a question
they go after alternatives, whether it would be useful to the OP or not.
It's best to just ignore them for the most part. Well worded
response, BTW<g>

--

Regards,

Twayne

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