Microsoft Product Activation Rant

[ncovert]

Alright, here you can slide the soapbox from under your bed and rant about the stupidest digital rights management control that Microsoft implemented with Win XP.

So, let me kick it off by saying that even the TINIEST change of hardware will cause you to have to reactivate. Even if you change the RAM it will do that. Microsoft? Does anyone else hate it as much as me? Post your replies and rants.

[mariushm]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

I changed motherboard and CPU and reinstalled Windows 7. Smooth, nothing but the online activation required, which was done in seconds.

Changed my 4 GB DDR3 to 16 GB DDR3... got popup saying you have to validate windows, but can't activate online.

Luckily the activate by phone feature is just mildly annoying, entering a crapload of numbers and writing down another crapload of numbers, but it's done nearly perfectly, stopping after a few digits and giving options to repeat the subset or jump to next one.

[ncovert]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

Any specific to Windows XP (the worst of them all)?

[Gabriel]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

Just check with slic toolkit too see if your bios has a slp string, if it does just install xp with the correct oembios files and you can change whatever you like as many times as you like.

If your bios does not have slp just add it.. .. .

[c_hegge]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

I've changed motherboards with XP before and still haven't had to re-activate, although other times I have. I've never had to re-activate XP over a ram upgrade before. ever.

[ncovert]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

Are you talking about with Win XP Home or Pro?

[Gabriel]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

Are you talking about with Win XP Home or Pro?

The slp string works for home and pro in addition to 2003 server and home server if I remember correctly.

[c_hegge]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

Are you talking about with Win XP Home or Pro?

Both

[Trune]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

Changing ram doesn't result in having to reactive.
However it can cause it if you have made another change within a certain time frame, it uses a algorithm to decide if the changes were significant enough to look like a possible change of major hardware.

[Gariarto]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

Trune has the right track. The 'tiniest change' of hardware calling for reactivation is not true.

Your install of XP has to have been brought to that point by previous hardware changes and then the next one is the last straw, so to speak.

During boot-up XP checks the following hardware..

Video card onboard or card
SCSI Adapter
RAM Amount Range (i.e., 0-64mb, 64-128mb, etc.)
IDE Adapter onboard or card
Network Adapter onboard or card (NIC) and its MAC Address
RAM Amount Range (i.e., 0-64mb, 64-128mb, etc.)
Processor Type
Processor Serial Number
Hard Drive
Hard Drive VSN (Volume Serial Number)
CD-ROM / CD-RW / DVD-ROM

Whenever you 'clean install' XP it stores a string made up from the first device of every category of hardware found during the install. In a file named wpa.dbl. This is written to your HD and eventually gets sent to Microsoft with the Windows version product ID and given key. This forms, I guess you could call an 'fingerprint' of your PC at that time.
Each time Windows boots it checks for any change to this stored number. If you significantly change hardware then it will flag a necessessity for reactivation since this could now be deemed a different PC.

The way the activation code works is it asks for what Microsoft calls ‘votes’ from each of the ten hardware types I listed above. It checks the hardware to see if it is the same. If 7 “yes, I am here and unchanged” votes are returned then it will continue into Windows desktop. Changing any hardware in any of the list loses you a yes point. Now this is where you get a break, sort of. You don't lose any more votes if you keep changing that same type of hardware. So after changing, say, a processor in an upgrade you can go on changing out the CPU without losing any more points for the CPU category. That way, an upgrader who can't make up his mind can try as many as he wants and doesn't get penalised and have to re-activate.

A changed Network Interface Controller (NIC card) is the big exception and counts for 3 points lost, and if you disable any component it counts as a point gone too. Some of the finer points I'm not sure of, like, I wanted to know if changing out a motherboard with onboard NIC, Video and whatever else just about cost you all your 7 ? The whole WPA code was created when it was most common to have everything in seperate cards.

Lastly, not particularly defending MS and their money mill but how would you protect your ass-ets if you wrote software you wanted to make money on ?

[Gariarto]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

Correct me if I'm wrong but different license 'channels' give you different activation rights.

At the top of the heap, VLK or Volume License Key does not require activation. Though Microsoft quickly stemmed the flood of leaked keys early on and an XP VLK install is checked against MS's activation servers' master list of issued keys.

RETAIL channel is supposed to be an unlimited amount of reactivations on the same PC. After a certain amount I think you have to call it in by phone, requesting a new key. I think they will allow you to 'retire' an old build for new and significantly upgrade an existing if you ask nice.

OEM channel AFAIK is a one shot deal. If you exceed your hardware change allowance then you're done. Thats why its the cheapest way to buy Windows and a MUST to back up WPA.dbl or image your install.

ROYALTY OEM is what Gabriel is talking about. The box shifters - Dell, Compaq, HP, Toshiba, Emachines, Asus, you name them... Have a preactivated Windows XP that looks for an SLP string (Software Licensing Protection) embedded in the BIOS of the motherboard it's coupled with. The install disk is slightly different to retail or store bought OEM in that it contains 4 OEMBIOS files to match the bios string. Never needs reactivation on a motherboard with the correct SLP string in BIOS.

Vista did a similar thing but a different variation requiring SLIC 2.0 in the BIOS and a certificate file added to Windows. Windows 7 did the same thing as vista but they changed the SLIC to 2.1 to stop you activating 7 on a Vista BIOS.

[japlytic]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

At one time, adding a PCI Express TV tuner card apparently threw out Windows 7 activation status.

[DJduck]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

My HD 4850 OC died and i swapped it for a HD 5450 i had (going to get 7850 soon) and BAM! Activation gone! Luckily i have a little program called 7loader and one restart later it was back But yea, its fucking annoying. Upgraded the ram in my athlon 64 system from 1g to 1.5g and XP did the same thing. Why the fuck is this necessary?

[Gabriel]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

@Gariarto - excellent write up.

[Gariarto]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

@Gariarto - excellent write up.

Thanks Gabriel ! Just wanted to demystify it a little. Though I'm not liking Window H8's Key Management Services (KMS) activation. You can still back up your activation though. Took me a while to get this off the 'net when I needed to re-install a customers PC. So for those with an interest or need ...

Back up the store folder @ C:\Windows\System32\spp\ It should contain data.dat, tokens.dat and a folder called cache, containing a file named cache.dat.

After you re-install Win 8, run cmd as Administrator, enter slmgr -upk to uninstall the key.. Now reboot into Safe mode and run msconfig. Select the Boot tab and then Safe boot-Minimal, apply and restart.

After this 2nd reboot in Safe mode run cmd as Administrator and type net stop sppsvc to shut down the Software Protection Platform service. Go back to C:\Windows\System32\spp\ and overwrite the new (just created byt re-install) store folder with your old one.

Now run msconfig and go back to Normal boot under the General tab. Apply and restart. After the normal reboot run cmd as admin' slmgr -dli/dlv/xpr for the activation status. Should be OK.

Remember, any significant hardware change will render this method useless. As will trying to apply the backed up activation to a different version of 8.

[momaka]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

I've changed motherboards with XP before and still haven't had to re-activate, although other times I have. I've never had to re-activate XP over a ram upgrade before. ever.

^ Same here. I have computer on which I changed not only motherboards, but absolutely everything else (except for the HDD on which Windows XP was on).

[severach]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

For XP retail & single user OEM need to activate on substantial hardware change. For a brand name like Dell, HP, no need to activate so long as a replacement board has the same SLP string. For Corp-VLK no need to ever reactivate.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

regular XP should have no activation problem, unless you use a known pirated key

for brand names, all keys practically have infinite activations. I"ve installed XP on custom built and used a dell key I used dozens of times to activate it, never once was denied

really the ONLY problem I've noticed is times when you're moving motherboards, and don't have the NIC drivers installed, and it won't let you login until you activate, but you need to login to install the nic drivers

of course ways around this is using a known PCI card with default xp drivers, or a USB nic (so far the ones i've used DO NOT work in 64-bit vista/7)

you can boot to safe mode, but installing the driver with the underlying networking system turned off is something I have had no luck with. Booting to safe mode with networking, brings up the same 'you must activate now shit.

[larrymoencurly]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

I recently had trouble installing XP because the activation screen complained that I had already installed that copy over 25 times, so it didn't give me the long string of digits needed for activation. But when I rebooted and got the activation screen again, it didn't make that complaint again. The difference was that on the first try I specified the country I was in, but on the second try I didn't do that.

[momaka]

Re: Microsoft Product Activation Rant

I'm not sure if Microsoft fixed this or not, but about a month ago I tried to activate several OEM XP keys and failed (got a "Windows cannot activate at this time" or something like that error message, giving me the option to activate by phone). Around that time, I also noticed that I couldn't access my Microsoft live webmail accounts. After a bit of Googling, I found that the common solution was to disable (or set to manual start) the "DNS Client" service. As soon as I did that, I was able to activate Windows on both computers and to access my Microsoft webmail accounts.
Just FYI, all of my computer run XP Pro SP2. Not sure if SP3 would have had that problem. I don't do updates, so I wouldn't know .