Activations harrasment after frequent hard drive changes

[Pop]

From this excellent information source about activation:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

Excerpt:
What about a swappable hard drive bay?

Provided the swappable hard drive bay is for secondary disks (used for data), and the boot disk with Windows is still
present, the swappable disks do not enter into the WPA calculation.
Excerpt_off:

This past year of scanning and or recovering infected or aging hard drives of kids, grandkids, and other friends and
neighbors, Windows XP-home oem is about to do in this retired old techie.

I am using a swap tray for mounting their hard drive as a secondary IDE slave. Most of the time it holds a large disk
for my Drive Image Backups of various partitions. For servicing the guest hard drive, the backup drive is swapped out.

It doesn't take too many swap outs across a month or two and Windows completely loses it's sense of humor. I find myself
in the middle of service activities and I am forced to reactivate.

Based on my limited understanding of WPA, I thought that I would be safe in performing those IDE drive swaps. What am I
missing?

Pop

 

[Ron Martell]

From this excellent information source about activation:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

Excerpt:
What about a swappable hard drive bay?

Provided the swappable hard drive bay is for secondary disks (used for data), and the boot disk with Windows is still
present, the swappable disks do not enter into the WPA calculation.
Excerpt_off:

This past year of scanning and or recovering infected or aging hard drives of kids, grandkids, and other friends and
neighbors, Windows XP-home oem is about to do in this retired old techie.

I am using a swap tray for mounting their hard drive as a secondary IDE slave. Most of the time it holds a large disk
for my Drive Image Backups of various partitions. For servicing the guest hard drive, the backup drive is swapped out.

It doesn't take too many swap outs across a month or two and Windows completely loses it's sense of humor. I find myself
in the middle of service activities and I am forced to reactivate.

Based on my limited understanding of WPA, I thought that I would be safe in performing those IDE drive swaps. What am I
missing?

Pop

The hard drive data, even if it was the boot drive that was changed,
is not enough of a change by itself to initiate a need to reactivate.
There would have to be changes in several other of the monitored items
as well.

Are you changing any other hardware in your computer?

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[pop]

The hard drive data, even if it was the boot drive that was changed,
is not enough of a change by itself to initiate a need to reactivate.
There would have to be changes in several other of the monitored items
as well.

Are you changing any other hardware in your computer?

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada

I use the PC when necessary to swap out RAM to check out if a DIMM is
okay, then change it back. I have three PC's in house, two are XP and
one is Windows 2000 PRO. All are in the generation of FSB 333 to 550.

The hard drive changes are common. I use my XP home machine to scan
other hard drives looking for spyware / demons, etc. On one occasion, I
inserted a video card to check it out, then went back to the MB built in
adapter. I am not a game player, and have very little music. Digital
camera is my big space user.

 

[Ron Martell]

I use the PC when necessary to swap out RAM to check out if a DIMM is
okay, then change it back. I have three PC's in house, two are XP and
one is Windows 2000 PRO. All are in the generation of FSB 333 to 550.

The hard drive changes are common. I use my XP home machine to scan
other hard drives looking for spyware / demons, etc. On one occasion, I
inserted a video card to check it out, then went back to the MB built in
adapter. I am not a game player, and have very little music. Digital
camera is my big space user.

RAM quantity is another monitored item for activation, so the
comibination of a new boot hard drive and a different quantity of RAM
would count as two changed items. Note that it is only the boot
drive that is monitored by activation. Additional hard drives can be
added and removed as you please without affecting activation.

Is there any chance that during these swaps the files wpa.dbl and
wpa.bak are being deleted from the boot drive? That will prompt a
requirement to activate.

For a good explanation of how activation works and which specific
hardware items are monitored see the article by the late Alex Nichol
MVP at http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."