Another Windows Activation Question

[Craig]

..
My understanding is the WPA system checks for ten categories of hardware
then assigns "votes" to them. If my machine always has seven " yes votes"
(meaning unchanged hardware) I will not need a new activation number. But,
what if my machine doesn't have all ten of the hardware categories?

Does WPA have a set number of votes to assign and will distribute them to
whatever hardware is present?

For example, if my machine only has the motherboard, RAM, an Athlon (with
no serial number), hard drive, CD rom, and video card...will WPA assign each
item multiple votes until it's vote quota is reached?

Thanks

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

See if the following article helps:

"Windows Product Activation (WPA) on Windows XP"
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

--

Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups


| .
| My understanding is the WPA system checks for ten categories of hardware
| then assigns "votes" to them. If my machine always has seven " yes votes"
| (meaning unchanged hardware) I will not need a new activation number. But,
| what if my machine doesn't have all ten of the hardware categories?
|
| Does WPA have a set number of votes to assign and will distribute them to
| whatever hardware is present?
|
| For example, if my machine only has the motherboard, RAM, an Athlon (with
| no serial number), hard drive, CD rom, and video card...will WPA assign
each
| item multiple votes until it's vote quota is reached?
|
| Thanks
|
|

 

[David]

Ask your manufacturer for an OEM liscense, there much more adept at
re-configuration as they are all about upgrades.

 

[Plato]

My understanding is the WPA system checks for ten categories of hardware
then assigns "votes" to them. If my machine always has seven " yes votes"

Who cares? Change all the hardware you want to and call MS if it dont
activate. Quite painless.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

Here are the facts pertaining to activation:

Piracy Basics - Microsoft Product Activation
http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/basics/activation/

Windows Product Activation (WPA)
http://www.aumha.org/a/wpa.htm


Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. - RAH

 

[LAD]

It seems to me that the activation business is the same as if when I buy the
newspaper in the morning, after paying with good money I had to ask the
editor the permission to read it.
Or put it another way, when I go to the supermarket & I buy a loaf of bread,
a tin of milk etc... I had to ask to the manufacturers the permission to eat
the bread, drink the milk etc...
I find this extremely suspect to have to do all these registrations
activation etc...and give all sorts of personal information.
I note that the warranty on software is only 2 weeks, when usually the
warranty given by serious manufacturers is at least 3 months, a year is most
common.

Salutations

LAD

 

[Malke]

It seems to me that the activation business is the same as if when I
buy the newspaper in the morning, after paying with good money I had
to ask the editor the permission to read it.
Or put it another way, when I go to the supermarket & I buy a loaf of
bread, a tin of milk etc... I had to ask to the manufacturers the
permission to eat the bread, drink the milk etc...
I find this extremely suspect to have to do all these registrations
activation etc...and give all sorts of personal information.
I note that the warranty on software is only 2 weeks, when usually the
warranty given by serious manufacturers is at least 3 months, a year
is most common.

Yes, well. Without getting into the whole "is activation right or wrong
thing"*, let me say 1) you don't give any personal information to MS
when you activate XP; 2) you can always use some other operating
system.

*Because while there are other regulars in this newsgroup who do
advocacy and discussion about activation, I don't. My personal feeling
is that this is a tech support newsgroup for XP, so I just don't go
there. I'm stressing the *personal* here - advocacy bores me, I don't
have time for it, and I don't think it is appropriate here. But that's
just me.

Malke (coming to you from a machine using SuSE 9.0 Pro, BTW)

 

[Alex Nichol]

My understanding is the WPA system checks for ten categories of hardware
then assigns "votes" to them. If my machine always has seven " yes votes"
(meaning unchanged hardware) I will not need a new activation number. But,
what if my machine doesn't have all ten of the hardware categories?

Does WPA have a set number of votes to assign and will distribute them to
whatever hardware is present?

An absent category will be seen as a positive vote - until you add an
item that falls in the category, when it becomes seen as changed, and
the vote is lost (and stays lost). This applies especially to SCSI
controller, which many machines never have; and to Processor Serial
Number which only exists on P III processor chips

The votes are to categories; first item in each category that is found
at set up is the one that matters. Later, at boot, the system will
search for all in that category and count Yes if it finds the item that
was there originally (or establishes that there still isn't one)

You can see the state of play for your machine with a free tool, XPInfo
that you can find at
www.licenturion.com/xp

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I find this extremely suspect to have to do all these registrations
activation etc...and give all sorts of personal information.

This is nothing but FUD. There is *no* personal information given
on activation. Although registration does ask for some
information, it's entirely optional; nobody needs to register.