Recently I added more Ram to my computer; I had to take out the old sticks in order to do this, so all the ram modules are new. When I add in ram in my computer I have to take out the video card, because it gets in the way. I wanted to test to make sure that the ram worked fine so at the moment I was using the on board video card. When I orginally installed Vista and activated, the AGP card was in, I guess in theory it saw two hardware changes both “Graphics Card” and “Ram”. Anyways long story short it asked me to reactivate; it would not let me do it through the internet because it claimed that it was “activated on another computer”, which was un true, but I guess because of the two small hardware changes it thought that this was a new computer. Now here is the question; I have Vista Ultimate Upgrade Version (Retail), I have been doing a number of hardware changes over the past 10 months or so and I have had to re-activate about 5 or 6 times in the past 10 months. Is there a limit to how many times I can re-active through the phone service? Like when I am at 10 or 15, will they tell me that I have reached my maximum and have to buy a new copy? Has this problem happened to any body yet? It would really be awful if I had to buy a new copy, and I only have it on one computer. Thank you, Jesse

You originally posted question about it two months ago in a thread under the topic Transfer Vista License. This thread was responded to by three of us - with no followup from you. Now please tell us if this new thread is or isn't in any way related to it. i_Xp/VistaUser

No they are not related, that one refered to transfering the license frm one pc to another pc, and that was a different copy of Vista than the one that I am talking about in this thread. This thread is about how many times one can activate (on the same computer) until they will no longer allow the user to activate any more, and be forced to buy a new copy. This would refer to hardware changes i.e; new video card, more ram, bigger hard drive etc. Jesse

Just as a follow up, I contacted Microsoft (the chat room) and basically one can re-active as many times as they want on the same computer. So If I had to phone in 20 times that would be ok.

Until your motherboard dies and you have to buy a whole new system with ne hard ware then you might have a bit of trouble getting it reactivated. As long as you have the same motherboard while doing all these upgrades ms will be ok with it.

You could also do an image of your drive. Then when you make certain hardware changes, such as new RAM, you could just restore the image and that would bypass the need to reactivate. Of course, that wouldn't work with a new motherboard since the old image would probably not boot windows-unless, of course, you were replacing the old mobo with an identical one.

Activation shouldn't be that hard. Just call microsoft and they will ask you only one question, is this the only computer you are installing vista on?? that was it and they gave me the activation code. Jim R