Windows activation - riddle me this

[Doomer]

Lost the motherboard in one of my systems, a Gigabyte, leaking caps.

I decided to move the role of this computer currently running Win XP. Since it had an old Maxtor PATA HD, I decided to move the newer SATA HD from the dead system to the XP system. This is the only component transferred over. My plan was to do a fresh install of Win 7 since this was most obviously called for. Well, for some reason, the system failed to boot from the DVD and proceeded to load Win 7. I decided to let it finish because I was curious as to how it would turn out.

Well lo and behold, to my amazement, Win 7 installed all the drivers for the new MB and after a couple of reboots I found myself at the desktop with zero warnings or messages. I went into the control panel - system and to my amazement, it says "Windows is activated".

I thought for sure I would have to reactivate after the mother of all HW changes but nope, Windows 7 took it in stride without a flinch.

So why did I not have to reactivate? (I would have done a fresh install at that point anyway).

 

[Elixer]

It didn't change enough.
You didn't change chipsets, so I guess you went from intel to intel or amd to amd, so, basically, everything was the same, except you changed IDE to SATA.

 

[JEDIYoda]

thank God this was not another blame windows 8.1 thread...........

 

[denis280]

thank God this was not another blame windows 8.1 thread...........

Did i hear.Windows 8.1 Joking JEDI.and for OP question the mobo chipset dint forget the serial.