You recently installed an update for your SATA drivers, right. That will
cause this.
According to this MS white paper with technical details behind the XP
implementation of WPA (which I assume should be quite similar to Vista's.
I could see it being slightly more restrictive, but come on...), that
activation is based on the below 10 hardware devices.
Display Adapter
SCSI Adapter
IDE Adapter
Network Adapter MAC Address
RAM Amount Range (i.e. 0-64mb, 64-128mb, etc)
Processor Type
Processor Serial Number
Hard Drive Device
Hard Drive Volume Serial Number
CD—ROM / CD-RW / DVD-ROM
I fail to see why a software-only driver should trigger re-activation.
(FYI, here is the white paper:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/509c95b4-3071-7e49-888b-b0fc6ce05fd8.aspx#EDAA)
The below is cut & pasted directly from that white paper. MS offers
different scenarios as to hardware changes and what WPA should do with
that.
WARNING: TO EVERYONE THAT CAN THINK FOR THEMSELVES, THE SCENARIO'S/WPA
RESULTS BELOW ARE SO FUNNY THAT YOU MAY END UP HAVING TO CHANGE YOUR
SHORTS.....AS WE'VE ALL SEEN, THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT HOW WPA
WORKS..........
Scenario A:
PC One has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1
above. User swaps the motherboard and CPU chip for an upgraded one, swaps
the video adapter, adds a second hard drive for additional storage,
doubles the amount of RAM, and swaps the CD ROM drive for a faster one.
Result: Reactivation is NOT required.
Scenario B:
PC Two has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1
except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM,
swaps the video card and the SCSI controller.
Result: Reactivation is NOT required.
Dockable PCs are treated slightly more leniently. In a dockable PC, if a
network adapter exists and is not changed, 9 or more of the other above
values would have to change before reactivation was required. If no
network adapter exists or the existing one is changed, 7 or more changes
(including the network adapter) will result in a requirement to
reactivate.
Scenario C:
Dockable PC Three has the full assortment of hardware components listed
in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount
of RAM, swaps to a bigger hard disk drive, and adds a network adapter.
Result: Reactivation is NOT required.
