Vista requires me to re-activate product, says key in use.

[Guest]

I have been using Vista since launch and have had no problems with it. I
activated it with the key provided with the operating system disk, which I
purchased to install on a computer I assembled, so it isn't an OEM copy. I
was prompted today to re-activate Vista, and when I go through the screens to
do so, it tells me that the product key is already in use, and that I have to
purchase a new copy of Vista or enter a new product key, not the one I have.
Any sugestions on where to go from here? In 3 days (2 at posting by now) it
is saying that Vista will not operate anymore, so prompt advice is deeply
needed. Thanks in advance.

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Select the option to activate by phone.
Call Microsoft at the displayed number for your region, usually done
in less than 10 minutes.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 00:08:07 -0600, "Jupiter Jones [MVP]"

Select the option to activate by phone.
Call Microsoft at the displayed number for your region, usually done
in less than 10 minutes.

I'd do that, but I would also insist on them telling me WHY this has
happened. "Spammer's logic" (that a cost-free, million-shot effort is
profitable if 1 in a million pays up) suggests these failures are
profitable to MS. Make them less so.

I've seen a number of posts here about spontaneous false-positive
activation demands. Every time, the advice is to "just" phone and
beg. No-one asks why this is happening, or tries to tshoot it.

For every 1 poster here, there must be what, 10? 100? 1000? others
with this problem ITW (In The Wild). Whayt % of those will "just"
follow the advice and buy a new license tpo keep their PC going?

It's like having someone in the neighborhood who's always threatening
to shoot people unless they give him money. It's OK, because the
gun's not loaded and he's only fooling around; if you just say No,
he'll give up and go away. But some folks pay, and that keeps the
racket in business.

MS's software threatening to stop working is similar; sure, we know
it's an empty threat, that if the user phones and begs, they will be
"let off" and allowed to use their PC again. And we see such
feedback; "it's fine now, I can use my PC again!"

But not ONE of these follow-ups have explained why they had a
false-alarm, or that MS went intoi it further, or took the slightest
interest in why the payload was triggered on an unchanged PC.

Which makes this look like a scam, similar to 200+ fake antispyware
apps that claim to have "found malware" but will only clean it if you
pay up. I'd expect MS to keep better company than this.

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If you're happy and you know it, clunk your chains.

 

[f/fgeorge]

On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 00:08:07 -0600, "Jupiter Jones [MVP]"


I'd do that, but I would also insist on them telling me WHY this has
happened. "Spammer's logic" (that a cost-free, million-shot effort is
profitable if 1 in a million pays up) suggests these failures are
profitable to MS. Make them less so.

I've seen a number of posts here about spontaneous false-positive
activation demands. Every time, the advice is to "just" phone and
beg. No-one asks why this is happening, or tries to tshoot it.

For every 1 poster here, there must be what, 10? 100? 1000? others
with this problem ITW (In The Wild). Whayt % of those will "just"
follow the advice and buy a new license tpo keep their PC going?

It's like having someone in the neighborhood who's always threatening
to shoot people unless they give him money. It's OK, because the
gun's not loaded and he's only fooling around; if you just say No,
he'll give up and go away. But some folks pay, and that keeps the
racket in business.

MS's software threatening to stop working is similar; sure, we know
it's an empty threat, that if the user phones and begs, they will be
"let off" and allowed to use their PC again. And we see such
feedback; "it's fine now, I can use my PC again!"

But not ONE of these follow-ups have explained why they had a
false-alarm, or that MS went intoi it further, or took the slightest
interest in why the payload was triggered on an unchanged PC.

Which makes this look like a scam, similar to 200+ fake antispyware
apps that claim to have "found malware" but will only clean it if you
pay up. I'd expect MS to keep better company than this.

Like some guy in India is gonna know why you need to re-activate your
version! Come on, think what you are asking of whom. MS will know the
answer to your question, the dufus in India will have no idea!

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

Like some guy in India is gonna know why you need to re-activate your
version! Come on, think what you are asking of whom. MS will know the
answer to your question, the dufus in India will have no idea!

"India" has nothing to do with it; there are no shortage of
highly-skilled techs there, including within MS. India's had strong
interest and skills in computers and software since the DOS era.

Such techs will not be manning the activation call centers, in India
or anywhere else (in our time zone, it's usually Ireland, BTW).

However, standard call center design will define policies for
escalation of issues to more skilled techs, all the way up to the core
dev teams. How else will these core teams benefit from the call
center's exposure to "breaking news" tech issues?

So I would expect this channel to work. I would expect the clue to
drop at MS that spurious activations are happening - perhaps they can
see this from info interchange during the activation process (e.g.
that the "before" and "after" hardware hash is the same).

And I would expect MS to do something about this, to fix the problem.

So yes, I'd advise anyone who "just" has to phone and activate their
systems for no reason, to do more than just beg to be allowed to use
their PC again, and say thank you. I'd urge these folks to escalate
the issue to MS's PSS, who should take an interest irrespective of
whether it is an OEM license or not.

I'd then expect PSS to chase this up; ask user to do tests and send
logs, that sort of thing. I'd hope this process continues to the
point that the user is informed what happened and why, and what is to
be done by MS to stop this happening again.

Then I'd hope the users would reply to their newsgroup threads to tell
us what the resolution was.

I'm not seeing that, so the problem is one/more of:
- fake user posts, i.e. there never really was such an issue
- user did not escalate issue for further attention (most likely)
- call center did not escalate to PSS
- PSS did not accept the ticket (e.g. "OEM - not our problem")
- PSS failed to contact user
- user failed to maintain dialog with PSS
- PSS did not attain a resolution
- PSS failed to communicate resolution to user
- user failed to communicate resolution to the newsgroup thread

OTOH, I seem to be the only one here (aside from useless Linux trolls
who noise out the discussions) who is advising users to pursue this
beyond simply being allowed to use their PCs again (until next time).

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The rights you save may be your own

 

[Guest]

I am having an issue as well, My hard drive crashed so i got a new one,
reinstalled, now my cd key is in use (on my old drive) ... so i call the
activate by phone, i enter my install ID and it says it can't be verified so
the machine says please hold while we trasnfer to you a tech support agent,
20 seconds later the music stops and the line goes dead "please hang up and
try your call again"

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:02:01 -0700, klassix

I am having an issue as well, My hard drive crashed so i got a new one,
reinstalled, now my cd key is in use (on my old drive) ... so i call the
activate by phone, i enter my install ID and it says it can't be verified so
the machine says please hold while we trasnfer to you a tech support agent,
20 seconds later the music stops and the line goes dead "please hang up and
try your call again"

If/when you get through, you should be OK... it's the same story, the
license is logged as in use where the old (existing) PC is the one
that is using it. Get a human and all should be well.

If you can't get a human on the activation line, try MS's support
line, make it clear you are calling ONLY about an activation issue and
that you have no intention of paying support charges, and get it
sorted out that way.

If that fails, find and physically visit a local MS branch if there is
one, and insist on redress. If that fails, consider legal action.

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