Has anyone else had their Windows 8 copy become "de-activated" due to minor hardware changes? I bought a retail version of Windows 8 Pro when it came out, along with a new motherboard and CPU (i5-3750K). I have an 256GB Crucial M4 OS drive, and a WD Green 1 TB storage drive. I've never swapped out the motherboard, but I often use the extra SATA ports on the motherboard to hook up hard drives for cloning to other hard drives, or for retrieving files from old drives. I have 6 computers in the house, and recently moved a few hard drives around, so I used my Win 8 machine to move files between several drives. Then yesterday I swapped video cards with my son (he was having some crashes on his computer) and windows said the copy wasn't legitimate, and I couldn't re-activate it online. I had to call up Microsoft, and do the 63-digit code.
I have previous experience with this, as I had an OEM copy of windows 7 before, and after a motherboard upgrade, and SSD and video card upgrades, I had the same thing, only worse. It got to the point that simply installing a new hard drive in the system (as a spare extra drive) would trigger it. It was funny I could hook up an extra drive, and then boot the computer - it would be un-activated. Then I'd remove the drive, boot up, and everything was fine again. Put the drive back in, and it was un-activated again. Sometimes taking the hardware back out again wouldn't help, and I'd remain unactivated, and have to call up Microsoft to activate. And I couldn't use the automated system either - I had to wait a long time to talk to a person, and literally argue with them that my Windows wasn't pirated. I thought I'd be through with this by buying a "retail" copy of Windows 8, but I guess not.
In any case it's real aggravating - I've only had Windows 8 since October, and the same crap is starting again. I'm surprised I don't hear about this more - I can't be the only person on earth who swaps hardware in and out of their machine on occasion...
I have previous experience with this, as I had an OEM copy of windows 7 before, and after a motherboard upgrade, and SSD and video card upgrades, I had the same thing, only worse. It got to the point that simply installing a new hard drive in the system (as a spare extra drive) would trigger it. It was funny I could hook up an extra drive, and then boot the computer - it would be un-activated. Then I'd remove the drive, boot up, and everything was fine again. Put the drive back in, and it was un-activated again. Sometimes taking the hardware back out again wouldn't help, and I'd remain unactivated, and have to call up Microsoft to activate. And I couldn't use the automated system either - I had to wait a long time to talk to a person, and literally argue with them that my Windows wasn't pirated. I thought I'd be through with this by buying a "retail" copy of Windows 8, but I guess not.
In any case it's real aggravating - I've only had Windows 8 since October, and the same crap is starting again. I'm surprised I don't hear about this more - I can't be the only person on earth who swaps hardware in and out of their machine on occasion...
Facebook
Twitter