Upgraded system..Win XP did not have to reactivate

NetGuySC

Golden Member
Nov 19, 1999
1,643
4
81

Hi,
I did a search for this, didn't find anything so I thought I would just throw it out here.

I have Win XP release candidate 2425?? or something like that..only had it a week and I absolutely love it.

My old system was:
Celery 300 oc'd to 450
Abit ZM6 board I think
2 Seagate scsi's 9 gigs each
soundblaster sound card
Plextor cd writer
196 meg ram
3com network/lan card


New system:
ECS K7S5A with AMD 1.4
new no name case
same 196 meg ram (corsair)
onboard sound card
onboard lan
using same hard drives and cd writer


I booted the new system with Win XP from old computer...booted and ran okay.

I could tell it had some issues, so I reloaded Win XP..now working great


The reason for this post is that I am not quite as computer literate as most here but I really thought I would have to reactivate Win XP after this major of a change in a system. Being that Win XP is an evaluation copy I still thought I would be calling Microsoft last night to get it running.

You are probably thinking that I had same hard drive, which is true, and that is why no reactivation....well I think same thing. But I thought WIN XP took a digital snapshot of entire system and would require reactivation if any major changes..well I thought I had a major change.

Perhaps someone here on a fact finding misson finds this post to be slightly interesting or useful :)


Yall take care,
Todd



 

andrey

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
3,238
1
81
From Paul Throutt's http://wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=22367

"
First, regarding the controversial new Windows Product Activation (WPA) technology, Microsoft told me that for the vast majority of new PCs, WPA will be tied solely to the BIOS. This means that users can change every piece of hardware on their systems--including the motherboard, as long as they get new motherboards from the same PC maker--without ever having to activate the product. Because new PC purchases account for more than 90 percent of Windows licenses, this policy will affect the majority of people interested in XP.

For users who choose to upgrade existing systems to XP, the news is also good. Microsoft has changed the reactivation requirement to at least six hardware components, as long as a NIC is installed in the machine (i.e., users will be able to change at least six hardware devices in such a machine before XP requires a reactivation). The company told me that it will move to its 24 x 7 telephone-activation operation by September 14 and expects that users who call to activate or reactivate XP will never have to wait more than 10 minutes.
"