Vista Activation

[Chris@Swift]

I registered my purchased and legal copy of Vista Home Premium in
February/March 2007 and all was well until yesterday when Windows informed
that I must activate Vista within 3 days or else. On trying to do this it
informed that the key was already in use by another computer!!!

I cannot affoid for the PC to 'shutdown' in 2 days and don't understand what
has happened. Please can anyone offer some advice.

Chris

 

[Chris@Swift]

Brink,

Many thanks, I have just sucessfully reactivated. Do you know why this
suddenley happened or is it an annual occurance?

Best regards,

Chris

 

[Donald L McDaniel]

Brink,

Many thanks, I have just sucessfully reactivated. Do you know why this
suddenley happened or is it an annual occurance?

Answer a few questions, please:

1) Did you recently visit Windows Update? Perhaps one of the updates
caused Windows Activation to de-register your activation [by mistake].
2) Did you recently make any [major] hardware changes (i.e., within
the last week), such as network cards, cpu/motherboard replacements,
hard drive replacements, "clean" reinstallations of Vista (by wiping
the drive, which will effectively remove the activation record on your
computer), or changes in Boot disk size or Volume Label, any of which
could cause your installation of Vista to lose its "activated" status?

Either of these may cause your activation record on the Activation
Server to get out of sync with the activation record on your home
computer, resulting in what happened. This almost always requires a
phone re-activation from a live Microsoft activation tech.

In answer to your last question:
This is NOT an annual occurance. There are no such occurances with a
Windows Home user license.


--
Donald L McDaniel

How can so many otherwise very intelligent people screw up
something so simple so badly? If you stick a computer
keyboard in front of most people, they'll suddenly drop
30 points off their IQs. Much like placing a "Pork Barrel"
bill in front of a politician: He'll forget all about
"cooperation" the minute he counts the zeroes before the
decimal point.

 

[Chris@Swift]

Donald,

I have made no changes to the hardware since building the PC last year when
Vista was originally activated. With respect to updates, I've set Vista to
automatically install so that may be the cause as you suggest.

Chris

Brink,

Many thanks, I have just sucessfully reactivated. Do you know why this
suddenley happened or is it an annual occurance?

Answer a few questions, please:

1) Did you recently visit Windows Update? Perhaps one of the updates
caused Windows Activation to de-register your activation [by mistake].
2) Did you recently make any [major] hardware changes (i.e., within
the last week), such as network cards, cpu/motherboard replacements,
hard drive replacements, "clean" reinstallations of Vista (by wiping
the drive, which will effectively remove the activation record on your
computer), or changes in Boot disk size or Volume Label, any of which
could cause your installation of Vista to lose its "activated" status?

Either of these may cause your activation record on the Activation
Server to get out of sync with the activation record on your home
computer, resulting in what happened. This almost always requires a
phone re-activation from a live Microsoft activation tech.

In answer to your last question:
This is NOT an annual occurance. There are no such occurances with a
Windows Home user license.


--
Donald L McDaniel

How can so many otherwise very intelligent people screw up
something so simple so badly? If you stick a computer
keyboard in front of most people, they'll suddenly drop
30 points off their IQs. Much like placing a "Pork Barrel"
bill in front of a politician: He'll forget all about
"cooperation" the minute he counts the zeroes before the
decimal point.

 

[Donald L McDaniel]

Donald,

I have made no changes to the hardware since building the PC last year when
Vista was originally activated. With respect to updates, I've set Vista to
automatically install so that may be the cause as you suggest.

Chris

From what I know, Chris, this appears to be a known problem with
Microsoft Windows Product Activation itself. While Microsoft claims
that the latest updates to WPA have fixed it so that there will be
fewer such de-activations, they are still reported by enough other
users on a regular basis to be troubling to consumers.

Either a lot of people are trying to steal Vista, or something is
wrong with WPA. I prefer to believe that most folks are honest, and
Microsoft's software is at fault.

Anyway, hopefully sooner rather than later, WPA will be intelligent
enough to be able to tell the difference between a hacked copy of
Vista and a legitimate one, and be intelligent enough to make such
misidentifications a thing of the past.

Personally, I would prefer a form of hardwired licensing, such as a
few "bad" sectors on the installation media, over the software-based
licensing we have today. Or a combination of the two. But this WGA
we have today is simply unpalatable. It probably costs as much in
money and other resources for Microsoft to maintain the WPA system
that they would lose in sales if it was not used.


--
Donald L McDaniel

How can so many otherwise very intelligent people screw up
something so simple so badly? If you stick a computer
keyboard in front of most people, they'll suddenly drop
30 points off their IQs. Much like placing a "Pork Barrel"
bill in front of a politician: He'll forget all about
"cooperation" the minute he counts the zeroes before the
decimal point.