Vista forcing me to reactivate after 1 memory upgrade

[bbear1]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: wirednuts
probably took long BECAUSE he was on early in the morning. its not that everone is calling MS- nobody's at work at 4am to answer calls. people who work telemarketing know all about the 4th shift, its just one guy sleeping on his keyboard... or out in the car smokin a fattie

OEM and RETAIL activation policies are identical for vista. it seems it just doesnt like rapid changing hardware, as said. at least they arent killing keys, im not sure why everyone is so mad. they give you three days to sort it out, its not like you HAVE to be on the phone at 4 am

Umm, do you know what time it is in India when it's 4am in the callers time-zone?

It's around 2PM in the afternoon in Mumbia India at the time I was calling. The difference between Eastern Time and Mumbai is 11.5 hours.

 

[bbear1]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
For example, did you activate before installing all your drivers? Because the drivers could bring in a new NIC or two (depending on motherboard), seemingly-new mass-storage controllers, additional third-party mass-storage controllers on some mobos, possibly change the percieved identity of the GPU...

...and then you finally change the amount of RAM by 50% on top of everything else, and Vista finally puts its foot down. To you, the RAM seems like the first change, because it's the only physical change, but to Vista it might seem like the fourth or fifth change. Does that make sense?

After activating on release day I:
(1) updated my VIA RAID drivers and
(2) updated my Nvidia drivers to the beta release

It still seems weird to me that this would influence vista to deactivate itself because Vista was able to see my RAID before using the old XP drivers I loaded at install time, and also my videocard worked fine after the Vista install.

 

[Brian48]

Originally posted by: Aberforth
there is something wrong...just upgrading RAM doesn't require Re-activation...I've seen it. My friend keeps switching his graphics card, ram. He is using Ultimate Retail....something very fishy going on here

Exactly. I've done more radical upgrades to my WinXP machine and I've never had to re-activate. I've even restored ghosted images of one activated install onto other PCs with completely differently HW configurations and have gotten away with it.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I just doubled the ram on my sons machine and didn't have a problem when I rebooted.

 

[MrUniq]

I went through the same experience the poster went through. Very angry experience..and I made atleast 20 friends in India over the period of 4 days. The trick is the by phone activation. And to me..it looks live Vista is far more sensitive than XP.I had a disk crash myself. I hate that MS doesn't simply let you use your Key again for auto activation...it kinda negates the point.

 

[SimMike2]

When you install Vista, at least my full Business version, when it asks for the install key, there is a little box below that is checked by default. This says "activate Vista automatically when online." I unchecked this every time I install Vista, which was three times before I got it right. I think this "automatic" activation would take place on the third day. Myself, I like thirty days. This gave me some flexibility on deciding exactly where and how I wanted to install Vista, and give me some time to decide while I fool around with one of my "test" installs.

So my advice is uncheck that stupid box and don't activate until you are sure you like your install of Vista.

One time I forgot to uncheck the activate automatically box. I stopped the Vista install at the next possible step, which aborted the install before anything was done.

In my opinion, it is borderline sleazy that MS is sort of forcing people to activate after three days, at least unobservant people who don't read the whole screen, and pretending people have thirty days.

Edit: all my installs have come from within XP installs. I Ghosted an image of my main XP boot partition, which means I was able to wipe a very flaky Vista "upgrade" of this partition and start over again.

 

[TJones2]

Originally posted by: bbear1
UPDATE:

Well here is what happened. I called the Microsoft activation hotline and spoke to a computer answer system. After reading out a long identification number provided by the Vista activation tool the system told me I needed to speak to a human to resolve this. I was put on hold for approx 30 minutes. Call was taken by a guy in an Indian call center. I explained my problem to him. He asked me how many PCs Vista was installed on. He asked me to read the first 6 digits of the identification number. After holding another 2 minutes he said that he was unable to find my number in the system. I then had to read out the entire number to him...(It's a pretty long number... at least 40 digits). He then gave me an equally long number to enter into a confirmation box in the Vista activation tool. I clicked next... 5 seconds later activation was completed.

I never had this problem with XP and I've done major upgrades including changing the motherboard to another model, updating the videocard several times, and installing new hard drives. Vista seems to be very sensitive about what hardware changes you make to your PC.

If you want to call India:
1. Remove 1 memory DIMM from your system.
2. Reboot
3. Reinstall the DIMM
4. Reboot
5. Congrats. Your Vista is deactivated. Hope you don't have to wait on hold as long as I did 🙁

It is this sort of thing that will keep me from ever upgrading to another MS OS, and cause me to move further into the Mac and Linux camp. FYI: I went through something similar to this with my XP Home, when I, in their view, activated it too many times. Went through this twice before I blasted the people at MS and I haven't had any problem since.

 

[fraquar]

You probably got de-activated because what it sounds like you had 3 different memory configurations within a short period (i.e 1 GB, 1.5 GB and 2GB). That isn't a typical "upgrade" footprint.

Just a theory, but it sounds like it is timestamping the changes - and has an algorithm that sees multiple changes in a short timespan as being "illegal or suspicious behavior". I guess this could be tested with other components - i.e Sound Cards, Video Cards, Network Cards (for those that don't use onboard LAN), etc.

I don't use Vista so I can't test - but seems to be a theory worth testing. Then again if that is the case - I woulodn't test it tooo much or too soon - or yeven your phone calls for re-activation will start to look suspicious :evil:

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Originally posted by: fraquar
You probably got de-activated because what it sounds like you had 3 different memory configurations within a short period (i.e 1 GB, 1.5 GB and 2GB). That isn't a typical "upgrade" footprint.

Just a theory, but it sounds like it is timestamping the changes - and has an algorithm that sees multiple changes in a short timespan as being "illegal or suspicious behavior". I guess this could be tested with other components - i.e Sound Cards, Video Cards, Network Cards (for those that don't use onboard LAN), etc.

This seems logical to me.

 

[greylica]

Huahauhau
Suffer !!!
Do you want Vista ?
Got it !

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Originally posted by: greylica
Huahauhau
Suffer !!!
Do you want Vista ?
Got it !

Thanks for your worthless post.

 

[Tom]

In the interest of not creating too many threads, I'll ask this here..

I bought a retail XP Home upgrade and got the 'free' retail Vista Home Basic upgrade, 32-bit. My original plan was to hold off installing these until I build a new system when DX10 games start coming out..

However, as far as I can tell, I could go ahead and install these in one of my current systems, and then remove them and use them in a new system later, but I'm suffering from information overload as far as what is allowed, not allowed, as far as moving the version of Vista I have to a new machine ?

If there isn't going to be a problem, then I might install Vista as a dual boot in one of my machines, mostly just to get used to it, but since I have a 7900GT card, I gather I ought to wait for a better version of nvidia's drivers ?

Those are my two questions, TIA.

 

[fraquar]

This probably isn't much help - but any OS that basically treats you like a criminal in your own home it's probably best to go striaight to Microsoft to get your answers.

This would be comparible to a truck shutting itself down if you decided to put an aftermarket exhaust on it, or upgrade the suspension to an off-road type or god forbid replace the onboard computer chip.

Hal9000's response to opening the pod bay doors in 2001., A Space Oddessy comes to mind here:
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".

 

[Double Trouble]

"Thank you sir, may I have another!" 😉

 

[nippyjun]

What is the hotline phone number?

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: fraquar
This probably isn't much help - but any OS that basically treats you like a criminal in your own home it's probably best to go striaight to Microsoft to get your answers.

This would be comparible to a truck shutting itself down if you decided to put an aftermarket exhaust on it, or upgrade the suspension to an off-road type or god forbid replace the onboard computer chip.

Hal9000's response to opening the pod bay doors in 2001., A Space Oddessy comes to mind here:
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".

Complain about DRM and activation, but wait to see how bad future versions get. Vista 2 will come with spy camera and hidden microphone. Vista 3 will be able to physically control your case and peripherals with the capability to electrocute you if it finds your behavior suspicious. Vista 4 will come with attack nanobots, and enslave the human race.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

Originally posted by: fraquar
This probably isn't much help - but any OS that basically treats you like a criminal in your own home it's probably best to go striaight to Microsoft to get your answers.

This would be comparible to a truck shutting itself down if you decided to put an aftermarket exhaust on it, or upgrade the suspension to an off-road type or god forbid replace the onboard computer chip.

Hal9000's response to opening the pod bay doors in 2001., A Space Oddessy comes to mind here:
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".

Complain about DRM and activation, but wait to see how bad future versions get. Vista 2 will come with spy camera and hidden microphone. Vista 3 will be able to physically control your case and peripherals with the capability to electrocute you if it finds your behavior suspicious. Vista 4 will come with attack nanobots, and enslave the human race.

I think that's extreme. It's natural to want to protect one's investment (as especially is the case with Vista) but there is only so much you can do before users will openly revolt against your products.

 

[TJones2]

Originally posted by: fraquar
This probably isn't much help - but any OS that basically treats you like a criminal in your own home it's probably best to go striaight to Microsoft to get your answers.

This would be comparible to a truck shutting itself down if you decided to put an aftermarket exhaust on it, or upgrade the suspension to an off-road type or god forbid replace the onboard computer chip.

Hal9000's response to opening the pod bay doors in 2001., A Space Oddessy comes to mind here:
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".

What I've found is that MS can tell you one thing one time, and a year later, tell you something completely different. Its the actual wording of what you agree to when you install that counts, and from what I've seen, its very restrictive. I've seen them do that with XP, being very liberal in their interpretation of the EULA to a very restrictive one a year later.

 

[tagaste]

Originally posted by: bbear1

Originally posted by: mechBgon
For example, did you activate before installing all your drivers? Because the drivers could bring in a new NIC or two (depending on motherboard), seemingly-new mass-storage controllers, additional third-party mass-storage controllers on some mobos, possibly change the percieved identity of the GPU...

...and then you finally change the amount of RAM by 50% on top of everything else, and Vista finally puts its foot down. To you, the RAM seems like the first change, because it's the only physical change, but to Vista it might seem like the fourth or fifth change. Does that make sense?

After activating on release day I:
(1) updated my VIA RAID drivers and
(2) updated my Nvidia drivers to the beta release

It still seems weird to me that this would influence vista to deactivate itself because Vista was able to see my RAID before using the old XP drivers I loaded at install time, and also my videocard worked fine after the Vista install.

Just in case anyone's still reading (or has this been resolved elsewhere?): I just did the VIA driver upgrade and the NVIDIA driver (as above) and got deactivated. No memory changes, but I did change the SATA setting in BIOS from RAID to IDE. That must've done it.

This is unconscionable.

 

[Jaxidian]

Originally posted by: tagaste

Originally posted by: bbear1

Originally posted by: mechBgon
For example, did you activate before installing all your drivers? Because the drivers could bring in a new NIC or two (depending on motherboard), seemingly-new mass-storage controllers, additional third-party mass-storage controllers on some mobos, possibly change the percieved identity of the GPU...

...and then you finally change the amount of RAM by 50% on top of everything else, and Vista finally puts its foot down. To you, the RAM seems like the first change, because it's the only physical change, but to Vista it might seem like the fourth or fifth change. Does that make sense?

After activating on release day I:
(1) updated my VIA RAID drivers and
(2) updated my Nvidia drivers to the beta release

It still seems weird to me that this would influence vista to deactivate itself because Vista was able to see my RAID before using the old XP drivers I loaded at install time, and also my videocard worked fine after the Vista install.

Just in case anyone's still reading (or has this been resolved elsewhere?): I just did the VIA driver upgrade and the NVIDIA driver (as above) and got deactivated. No memory changes, but I did change the SATA setting in BIOS from RAID to IDE. That must've done it.

This is unconscionable.

That's retarded - 0 hardware changes and only changing settings and drivers causing de-activation. MS really goofed up badly on this algorithm.

 

[chris21adan]

Where did you get your Vista identification number???

 

[Sind]

Also had to re-activate two days ago when I updated nforce drivers, didn't install any new hardware since originally activating it on Feb 1st. using vista x64 home prem OEM here. Installing vista on another machine and will be waiting and sorting drivers out first this time to save me the hassel of phoning in case it happens on that box also.

 

[Captante]

Wow ... Now I'm really glad I went with a dual-boot install... I suggest that everyone who has to go through this BS, complain bitterly (but politely) to the techs you speak with in India.

 

[fraquar]

The evolution of Windows:

Plug n Pray - The revolutionary automatic hardware detection system that lets you seamlessly detect and configure hardware within the OS - no more manual configuration needed. It's intent is to make it EASIER for users to add/replace hardware components.

Flash forward 10 years later:

Unplug n Pray - The systematic criminalization of an entire OS user base should they god-forbid try to increase the performance of their PC by replacing components. It's intent is to keep users from replacing hardware components - unless express permission is obtained from Microsoft.

I can't wait for the day when mass storage devices have imbedded in them microcode that detects the presence of a Microsoft OS - and refuses to allow it's boot sector to be written to. 😉

 

[Brian48]

Just my input. Updated to the recently released nForce4 drivers for my BFGTech motherboard. No hardware or BIOS changes, just the motherboard drivers. BINGO. Got the message upon bootup that "this was not a Genuine Install of Vista....yada yada yada". Called MS, the only thing they could do was refer me to their action URL: http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/diag

This got me up and running, but it was still a pain in the ass and annoying as hell.