activation

[Guest]

I have heard and read in maxium pc mag that for windows vista you will only
be able to install the product twice befor you will need to buy a new
license. So for those of us that reformat and reinstall a couple of times a
year or so this does not sound like a product for us. If this is true and as
much as i would like the direct x 10 graphics i will not be buying vista.
Does anyone know anything different on this? I guess it is stated in the
agreement at the installation start.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

It is not true. You can reinstall to the same hardware as many times as you
wish.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

False.
You can reinstall Vista an unlimited number of times on the same computer.
Yet another reason I do not like that rag.
Find another source for Microsoft information.
Almost any is better than Maximum PC.

 

[Robert Moir]

False.
You can reinstall Vista an unlimited number of times on the same
computer. Yet another reason I do not like that rag.
Find another source for Microsoft information.
Almost any is better than Maximum PC.

Oh my gosh. I picked up a copy of that magazine once and it might as well
have been written in crayon for the quality of its contents. I can only
second Jupiter Jones' suggestion to ignore anything claimed by this lot.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Jupiter,

False.

You can reinstall Vista an unlimited number of times on the same computer.

Yes, but what's less clear is how you (and Microsoft) define "same
computer"?

Most home users will end up with what Dell give them, and that's the end
of the story, but the kind of people who will actually go an buy an
operating system would usually do so, so that they can install it to
what ever hardware they're playing with at the time (e.g. gamers who
want to keep trying different processors and mainboards).

In this context it would be useless if the o/s fails after testing just
two processors.

We should then ask about hard drives; does Vista check the serial number
of the hard drive? If so, it won't be much use after a hard drive crash,
or when someone moves it to another physical drive.

Another question, is will this affect installs that use an Activation
server in a corporation, will it refuse to Activate after a hardware change?

 

[Barry Watzman]

I don't think that the problem is PC Magazine, I think it was the OP's
[mis]interpretation of what was printed, which I think was correct at
the time it was printed (as you know, MS changed the retail
reinstallation policy, but neither the original nor the revised policy
even applied to reinstallation on the same machine ... a fact that was
widely misunderstood).

 

[Barry Watzman]

First, no ONE single change, be it the hard drive, the network card or
the CPU, will cause the activation system to determine that it's now on
a "different" system. [The motherboard is an exception to that, for
reasons that I think are fairly obvious]. [XP checked the s/n of hard
drives, so presumably Vista will also. In XP, the MAC address of the
NIC was heavily weighted in determining if the system had changed. In
Vista, the s/n of the hard drive is being more heavily weighted (and
perhaps the weighting of the MAC address has been reduced). But still,
changes in either of those items ALONE didn't cause reactivation in XP
and probably won't in Vista.

Second, in XP MS has "reset" the activation servers for each product key
after 4 months with no changes. That is not required or specified by
the EULA, but has served well as a compromise to allow both reasonable
protection of Microsoft's interests and reasonable upgrades by
"enthusiasts". We don't know if this practice will continue under Vista
or not, but there's no reason at this time to presume that it won't.

Third, when component replacement has cause online activation to fail,
MS has actually been pretty liberal at allowing activation via their
call center when a reasonable explanation was provided.

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

How I define "same computer" is irrelevant.
But it seems the same criteria applied to Windows XP will apply to Windows
Vista.
This was written for Windows XP, but I think Vista will be similar:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

What you describe is more of an upgrade and is probably still seen as the
same computer.
I also usually suggest not activation until into 20 -25 days into the 30
days allotted time before activation.
This gives time for changing hardware before activation while also give time
to resolve any activation issues.
Your example of replacing processors would probably fit into that time.

However OEM are a different animal.
Depending on how the OEM sets it up, any change may make it a new computer.
Typically OEM Windows are tied to the operating system and will not install
on a computer from a different manufacturer.
There were ways around this for some computers, but I think Microsoft will
prevent some of those.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Jupiter,

Yes, it may be a hardware "upgrade" and why not? As I said, the kind of
people who will actually want to "own" a full version operating system
(as opposed to an upgrade) will do so because they want to play with
lots of different mainboards and hardware and are looking at the long
term investement. e.g. gamers, speed freaks, the guys at TomsHardware or
various PC magazine tech labs.

One thing I read today was that some Dell's may have a Windows related
"string" in the BIOS that ties it in somehow? I don't like the sound of
that!

 

[Mike C.]

I'm going to be 100% honest with you here. But I highly doubt there will be
any problems reinstalling Windows Vista on as many machines as you want as
long as you're not running it on multiple machines at the same time. What I
mean is, over the course of 4-5 years, you will likely go through quite a
few upgrades if you're an enthusiast. Reinstalling Vista on each of your
upgraded machines, whether they're dual core/ddr2, quad core/ddr3, octal
core/ddr5000, you won't see an issue.

The instant reinstalling a retail copy of Windows Vista becomes a problem,
is the instant a majority of these people move to an open source alternative
to Windows. Microsoft knows this, and won't let this happen.