Vista Activation

[Mike]

I had to reinstall Vista. I already had
it activated. Now that I reinstalled it,
will the second activation fail ?

When I had Win XP, I had to call India.
and read them a bunch of numbers, and I
had to explain just what the heck I was
up to, in order to cause the activation to
fail.

Does Vista behave the same way ?
I installed it the first time less than
a month ago. Does the length of time
between installs have anything to do
with a failed activation ? I have the
exact same hardware for the second
install.

Please help me to understand about
the restrictions of Vista activation.

Thanks
Mike

 

[Tibelian]

AFAIK, the way its supposed to work - if you havent had any significant
hardware changes to your system (motherboard, HDD etc): the activation
should not be a problem.
Good Luck!

 

[Guest]

I'm having a major problem with my windows vista activation...i activated my
windows, and then added two extra hard drives plus a new sound card. Now, its
telling me to activate windows, and it says i only got 4 days left...I tried
to activate windows again, but it says the CD-key is already in
use......man.....not cool. Is there anyway that I can have my cpu activated
with my original CD-key?

 

[Bruce Jacobs]

You should be able to fix this by making a phone call to the activation
center and telling them what is going on.

Good Luck

 

[Nina DiBoy]

I had to reinstall Vista. I already had it activated. Now that I
reinstalled it,
will the second activation fail ?

When I had Win XP, I had to call India.
and read them a bunch of numbers, and I
had to explain just what the heck I was up to, in order to cause the
activation to
fail.
Does Vista behave the same way ?
I installed it the first time less than
a month ago. Does the length of time
between installs have anything to do
with a failed activation ? I have the exact same hardware for the second
install.
Please help me to understand about the restrictions of Vista activation.

Thanks
Mike

You don't have to let them put you through this every time.

http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/activation_facts.mspx

"Activation is completely anonymous and requires no personally
identifiable information from the end user…"

"Mandatory Product Activation Data

The Installation ID is unique to each product and comprises two components:

Product ID. Unique to the product key used during installation
Hardware hash. Non-unique representation of the PC

The country in which the product is being installed (for Office XP and
Office XP family products only)"

You are not required to give them any other information. If they insist
on it, refer them to this information on their own website and if
necessary ask to speak to a supervisor. Tell them that you value your
privacy and that you prefer not to release certain personal details
about yourself that is clearly stated to be optional information on
their website.

--
Priceless quotes in m.p.w.vista.general group:
http://protectfreedom.tripod.com/kick.html

Most recent idiotic quote added to KICK (Klassic Idiotic Caption Kooks):
"You can get dog shi* for free also!"

"Good poets borrow; great poets steal."
- T. S. Eliot

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

I'm having a major problem with my windows vista activation...i activated my
windows, and then added two extra hard drives plus a new sound card.

Check that against what we know about how Vista activation works...

As long as the change is below 25 points you do not need to
re-activate. Here is the table to determine total points.

Component Class Name Default Weight

CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD-ROM 1
IDE Adaptor 3
Physical OS Hard Drive Serial # 11
Display Adaptor 1
SCSI Adaptor 2
Audio Adaptor 2
Network Adaptor MAC Address 2
Processor 3
RAM Amount Range (i.e. 0-512mb, 512-1GB) 1
BIOS ID ('0' always matches) 9

So you change a sound card; that should leave you with 35 - 2 = 33
points, well ahead of the 25 points (left? lost?) threshold. Vista
should not prompt for activation if working as designed.

Did you remove the old HD? If so, the impact may escalate to 2 points
for the audio, 11 points for the HD, for a total of 13 lost points.
That's still under 25 points lost, and over 25 points remaining.
However you interpret it, Vista should not be prompting for activation
if it is working as designed.

So either Vista's payload is not working as designed, or the
information on how Vista works is wrong, or there have been more
hardware changes (or "more hardware changes", i.e. software or
settings changes that are mis-detected as hardware).

Can you give us more detail on exactly what was done?

Now, its telling me to activate windows, and it says i only got 4 days left...

That's the payload, yes.

I tried to activate windows again, but it says the CD-key is already in
use......man.....not cool.

Call the voice line and explain you've changed hardware and therefore
the pC is being detected as different. Once they realize the "in use"
is in fact the same PC, they should activate you OK.

Also, if your chages are short of that described in this post, ask for
an explanation as to why the payload was triggered, and report back
here. I'm seeing far more activation issues in these newsgroups with
Vista than when XP debuted this as a new concept, and many cases seem
to involve sub-threshold changes that should not trigger the payload.

--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -

Error Messages Are Your Friends