Install new drivers prompts windows reactivation?

[Silversierra]

Ok, so I have a nvidia 6600gt card, and was using the 76.41 drivers, but have seen some good things about the newer drivers, so I dl'ed and installed the 81.98 drivers off the nv site.
To do this I did the add/remove prog. removal of my old drivers, rebooted into safe mode, ran driver cleaner and cleaned the "nvidia" and "nvidia wdm" selections available. I then rebooted, got to the detect new hardware screen, canceled it and then installed the new drivers. It worked out ok, as my display is working well, and the new driver is slightly faster. The problem is windows now says I must reactivate windows in 3 days, since my system "changed so much". I did this and it worked, but am wondering why it made me reactivate.

Also, I'm getting a 7800gt soon, can I just swap my current 6600gt out and put the new 7800gt and reuse my current drivers? Will it be as simple as I'm thinking it will be, or is there more to it?
Thanks.

 

[professor1942]

A new video card alone is not enough to prompt re-activation.

And I would uninstall the old card first, then reinstall the drivers with the new one in.

 

[Silversierra]

So even though the new card will use the same drivers, it still needs the driver reinstalled to work right?

 

[Killrose]

I'm thinking you accidently removed some of the nVidia motherboard chipset drivers when you removed your video drivers. That is the only possible way you would have to reactivate.

I'm not the expert here, but maybe try a system roll back recovery to a previous state? If you have to call in for MS reactivation they will not allow it due to your modified DeLL config.

 

[professor1942]

Sure they will, I had to phone in a reactivation once for changed parts, then that pissed me off so I gave the XP Home to a friend and reactivated it a second time on a completely different machine.

Oh wait a sec, it came on a Dell, maybe not then...

 

[Silversierra]

This is not on my modded dell. It's on my gaming rig. (My modded dell wouldn't reactiveate at first, so I called MS, and they gave me a code to make it work, and now it does.) Now back to the topic, I just updated my graphics driver on my 6600gt from 76.41 to 81.98, and used driver cleaner to remove old files, and then installed the new driver, and got prompted to reactivate windows.

I didn't change my vcard or anything yet, just installed new drivers. I didn't select the nvidia motherboard/chipset drivers in driver cleaner, only "nvidia" and "nvidia wdm"(whatever wdm is, when I did this, it removed 4 .dll files), it's what the instructions said to do. When I removed the graphics driver from add/remove programs, I selected only the nvidia graphics driver, and nothing else nvidia. I can't see why it said I needed to reactiveate. I did reactivate and it worked, but I'm confused about why I had to do so.

If I really did remove some kind of chipset driver, then don't you think windows would have detected the chipset as "new hardware" and wanted to install a driver for it? I think it would have if that was so, but it didn't, so I don't think I removed any chipset drivers. No "?"'s in device manager either.

Everything seems to be working fine, I just found it very odd that I had to reactivate.

And also, simple question, can I just shut down, take my old 6600gt out and put a new 7800gt in, fire it up, and expect it to work with the same driver/system config? I'm guessing I can, and windows, will just detect new hardware, etc, and be fine. Is that correct? Surely someone has upgraded from a nvidia card to a newer nvidia card here before.

 

[Silversierra]

Can anyone answer/comment on this? Thanks.

 

[n7]

Activation for Windows is teh ghay.

When i added a HDD & it required phoning in to get it activated again, next time i formatted, i switched to an OS that doesn't require activation...

 

[Silversierra]

Can anyone please answer this question?
"Can I just shut down, take my old 6600gt out and put a new 7800gt in, fire it up, and expect it to work with the same driver/system config? I'm guessing I can, and windows, will just detect new hardware, etc, and be fine. Is that correct? Surely someone has upgraded from a nvidia card to a newer nvidia card here before."