windows activation

R

robina_80

Active Member
ages ago when i installed my new GFX card ive always had this problem once in a blue moon it says windows requires activation so i activate it and think nothing of it BUT recently it came up again and showing just the black screen in the backround and when i tried to activate it, it said this key invalid or something along the lines basically it doesnt let me activate it no more and then i couldnt go into windows so i had to reinstall windows and i thought as im doing it from fresh it will this time activate it and when i go into control panel system



and i think it has the same problem, it doesnt think my windows is genuine but it is i got it at a retailer
 
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I have no solution for you. That is the reality of the day. I have copies of paid and valid copies of genuine Windows that won't validate. It is an imperfect system. Protecting against piracy has taken precedence over customer rights. We no longer own our software. We borrow it and hope that the manufacturer will continue to let us borrow it. Sometimes they don't.
 
it has come to my attention that because i have a builders disk or OEM that everytime i make a hardware change i need to contact micro but if i get retail i wont have this problem just activate it once and that be that
 
So, far with my system build oem software Ihad activated it 3 times with calling microsoft. Lucky I guess. (robina_80) I wouldn't have posted that pic of your screen with your product code on it. Just a thought.
 
Thats not a bad disk its just the way WPA works, each time you have a specific hardware chance it'll take a point out on your WPA, once you do a certain amount of changes with specific hardware MS will need to be called. Theres WPA ToS on MS's website somewhere it details everything there.

I just end up calling MS and telling them what happened, and they sort it for me. I've only ever bought a retail lisence once, and still had to call them.


I've once had WPA flag up needing activation once when I installed a new PSU. I have no idea how the heck it knows I've changed that.
 
Bootup05 said:
Thats not a bad disk its just the way WPA works, each time you have a specific hardware chance it'll take a point out on your WPA, once you do a certain amount of changes with specific hardware MS will need to be called. Theres WPA ToS on MS's website somewhere it details everything there.

I just end up calling MS and telling them what happened, and they sort it for me. I've only ever bought a retail lisence once, and still had to call them.


I've once had WPA flag up needing activation once when I installed a new PSU. I have no idea how the heck it knows I've changed that.
Click to expand...

I mean I can see this happening when you change a PSU but a graphics card I wouldn't think would be significant enough to cause this
 
Yes with the PSU thing, I understand why it affects it, usually if You have a different PSU you are using a different System.

What i was saying was how the hell does it know when you've changed your PSU? I mean it happened instantly when I booted up with a new PSU, you can't do that by say measuring the rail voltage fluctuation over a certain time. (Only way I can think of how they could do it. It was instant though! :confused:
 
I hate to say this since it is borderline against forum rules, but just disable activation. There are hacks out there to do that. I had an XP Pro retail first revision CD, and when I downloaded and splipstreamed SP2 into it, it would not take my valid license key. It seems that since I had an original Win XP Pro disc and that when I slip streamed SP 2 into it, something didn't match and it rejected my key. I had to call MS and be on hold for 30 min to talk to someone to get it activated. Sorry, not doing that every time I use a valid product I paid for.

So, since I didn't feel like running 2 hours of updates every time I reloaded my system I just simply disabled activation.

Google is your friend, and as long as you have a valid license key the MS police can't really do much about it.
 
Would cathode's? :P

It's weird this one. I was at a LAN. PSU died cos of a spike. So picked up a new one, booted up, went into BIOS, loaded up the saved settings, got into Windows & Boom Windows Had been Disactivated :confused: And thats the only thing I touched :S

Oh this was on XP btw. Someone has had the exact same experience on the Digital Spy forums, Except he wasn't at a lan. lol

I know a PSU is not on the WPA bootup checklist, which is why I'm stumped, as I remember specifically going over my bios whilst checking voltages before I booted up for the first time.
 
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You never know with Window$. I suppose it's possible. Awhile back, the WPA file scheme got corrupted on my Vista install. I rebooted after installing some updates, logged into Windows and received a black screen telling me my activation had expired. After 45 minutes on the phone with M$, and several steps in the command prompt, I reinstalled all the WPA files and my install was back to normal.

In other words, something else funky could have occured with your XP activation, outside of the PSU swap.
 
Bootup05 said:
Would cathode's? :P

It's weird this one. I was at a LAN. PSU died cos of a spike. So picked up a new one, booted up, went into BIOS, loaded up the saved settings, got into Windows & Boom Windows Had been Disactivated :confused: And thats the only thing I touched :S

Oh this was on XP btw. Someone has had the exact same experience on the Digital Spy forums, Except he wasn't at a lan. lol

I know a PSU is not on the WPA bootup checklist, which is why I'm stumped, as I remember specifically going over my bios whilst checking voltages before I booted up for the first time.
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Sounds like DRM gone bad to me
 
all i can say is microsoft have taken software piracy to a next level i mean its bad enough them charging you £80 for windows let alone every time you change a poxy hardware on your pc you got to let them know
 
when i reinstalled windows and activated it im pretty sure its still not activated when it darn well says "windows is activated" the reason why i think its not activated is because every time windows produces errors saying this host process has stopped working etc etc and the look of my home prem is not the same its gone back to the basic look
 
i called micro and i explained how i installed a new graphics card and he said you should only have to activate windows once after you installed the new gfx but i said once every 2 weeks or whatever it reappears and then we came to the conclusion its a hardware conflict, and i said since having windows vista ive always had this unknown device and i think its my sound card as its got a game pad connector on it and i said how vista doesnt support game pads no more and i said ive disabled the device but yet i still get asked to activate windows.
 
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