Another Reactivation Story

[dunedin]

Hello all

Nick, I hope you will read this since you are thinking of reinstalling.

Had a Dell machine to fix today. Originally XP but had used the free Upgrade to Home Basic.

First of all, have to tell you this one. He had a bad case of viruses/every malware under the sun, so guess what he did to fix it? He deleted all the User Accounts and then brought it to me

Anyway, got it all reinstalled and it would not reactivate. I had to phone an automated service and answer a lot of questions. Twice I was asked if this copy of the operating system was installed on one or more than one computer.

After keying into phone 9 sets of 6 numbers which were onscreen and then going through it all again with an actual human being, I eventually was given a reactivation key.

All is well now, but it would appear that you cannot activate more than once.

Be prepared Nick.

Elaine

[SuperSparks]

Hmmmm, this is wrong. MS have expressly stated that you can reinstall Vista on the same hardware as many times as you wish. If the activation algorithm isn't seeing that it is the same hardware, then there is a serious problem somewhere. If it happens to me as well, then I'll use the MVP bug reporting facility.

Thanks Elaine

[bistro]

I believe you are also allowed one and only one major hardware change before the activation algorithm "calls home" to Momma Microsoft and whines about it. I was thinking about switching my Vista installation over to a 150GB Raptor drive....but with all the reactivation horror stories I've been reading, I'm not so sure I want to take the risk.

[SuperSparks]

This is what MS have to say about hardware changes:

A Microsoft spokesperson told Ars Technica that "the hardware tolerance of product activation for Windows Vista has been improved and is more flexible than that for Windows XP," indicating that re-activations caused by minor changes to a PC should be less common. "We believe these improvements will better accommodate the needs of our PC enthusiast customers," the spokesperson said.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061030-8104.html