Originally posted by: Navid
After you activate, a record of your system will be stored in a database. If you attempt to activate again on a different hardware with more than 3 items different, you will not be able to activate unless you make a phone call and explain why you are entitled to activate.
I understand that the record will be removed from the database after 4 months. So, if you attempt to activate after 4 months, you will not have any problems even if you activate it on a completely different hardware. But, this does not mean that it is legal! This may be why you were able to activate multiple times with different hardware.
Another possibility is that you did not change more than 3 items.
This is how hardware items are monitored.
<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/activation_faq.mspx
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http://www.microsoft.com/pirac...tivation_faq.mspx
</a>
"Specifically, product activation determines tolerance through a voting mechanism. There are 10 hardware characteristics used in creating the hardware hash. Each characteristic is worth one vote, except the network card which is worth three votes. When thinking of tolerance, it's easiest to think about what has not changed instead of what has changed. When the current hardware hash is compared to the original hardware hash, there must be 7 or more matching points for the two hardware hashes to be considered in tolerance. If the network card is the same, then only 4 additional characteristics must match (because the network card is worth 3, for a total of 7). If the network card is not the same, then a total of 7 characteristics other than the network card must be the same. If the device is a laptop (specifically a dockable device), additional tolerance is allotted and there need be only 4 or more matching points. Therefore, if the device is dockable and the network card is the same, only one other characteristic must be the same for a total vote of 4. If the device is dockable and the network card is not the same, then a total of 4 characteristics other than the network card must be the same".
"The changes are cumulative; however, if a user is asked to reactivate, the hardware profile is reset to that new configuration".
"The 10 hardware characteristics used to determine the hardware hash are: Display Adapter, SCSI Adapter, IDE Adapter, Network Adapter MAC Address, RAM Amount Range (i.e. 0-64mb, 64-128mb, etc), Processor Type, Processor Serial Number, Hard Drive Device, Hard Drive Volume Serial Number, CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD-ROM".
