My friends PC was a mess, we reinstalled windows. All was fine, everything running proper again. We installed the nvidia chipset drivers which includes the onboard ethernet. Prompted to reboot, we did.

And then BAM "your hardware has changed" blah blah blah...No, it has not.

Not one part was changed from start to finish. We installed drivers which are SOFTWARE, and windows product activation BS thinks HARDWARE changed. Its decided he's reactivated "to many times"...He's had a grand total of 3 activations. THREE is to many!?

It has given him 3 days before he's to be locked out of his own PC, and wants him to supply a new product key.

Its saturday, its 1am. MS support is open monday-friday from 9am to 5pm.

If anyone from this forum can help me not pull anymore hair out in frustration and possibly not spend hrs on hold followed by hrs of arguing with an MS tech person, I'll be eternally grateful.

On the activation screen should be an option to activate by phone. Click that option, walk through the automated prompt. IT will tell you its been activated too many times and transfer you to a person. They ask if you have Windows installed on more than 1 computer, say no, and they will give you a code to type in to activate. I think they are open 24/7, but if not, you have three days so just call Monday.

-Ryan Adams
http://RyanTAdams.com

I have this resolved now but theres a story with it..

To clarify, this isn't the "you must do it by phone from now on" error. This was the "you may never use that key again" error.

I used my company's business support contract number with MS to get a hold of someone and left out that this wasn't the companies PC until I got some answers. I was told this was related to sp3, and that software updates count as a "significant change" and trigger the reactivation prompt.

No reason was given for killing the key, but even after I explained who's PC this was a new one was issued with much less hassle than I expected. This has been one frustrating night.

>> I was told this was related to sp3, and that software updates count as a "significant change" and trigger the reactivation prompt. <<

That is a load of bollocks, think about it for a moment and you will realise why. SP3 is software. Activation is concerned with hardware and nothing else. In fact SP2 made far more significant changes than SP3 does.

Stuart

I'd have to agree with Stuart. If MS based their activation on software changes instead of hardware I'd be reactivating every week! As would a large percentage of the computing world including businesses. In the face of that type of frustration I'm betting I wouldn't be the only user to swap to Linux......and they (MS) know it.

No, it was likely due to the number of reinstalls on that PC. I've owned this copy of XP Pro for quite a few years now and reinstall about once a year just to clean up the junk. The last time I did, I had the exact same issue and called them up and within 15 minutes was back in business.

It's worth noting, my hardware has changed several times over since the last install (upgraded my video card to an 8800 GTS, then to two of them in SLI a couple months later, added another GB of RAM, added another HDD) and not once have I been bothered to contact MS. But, I will have to I'm 100% sure when I do the next clean install.

Over the years I've spent (wasted) many an hour talking to MS support people......wading through the know-nothing idiots to finally get to speak with someone that does have a clue and the first time I had to call MS about reactivation I was not a happy camper. But as I said above, I spent less than 15 min's on the phone and it was rather painless.

>>That is a load of bollocks, think about it for a moment and you will realise why. SP3 is software. Activation is concerned with hardware and nothing else. In fact SP2 made far more significant changes than SP3 does.<<

I argued for quite some time, it is what I was told.

>>No, it was likely due to the number of reinstalls on that PC.<<

No, it was not.

>>The last time I did, I had the exact same issue and called them up and within 15 minutes was back in business.<<
Not so for us. We got a big old tough sh!t that key is no longer valid.

Look, that we even tripped the activation is total crap let alone them killing the key after only 3 installs in the entire life of this PC (4 years).

My guess would be they made some kind of change to WPA in sp3. Since I slipstreamed sp3 into a new install CD for him and we installed from that. Then after we installed activated and installed drivers, it tripped do to those changes. Installing the drivers before never tripped WPA.