DescentBB

I just finished building a new system. I loaded windows about a week ago and had no problems. Then, I Picked up a SATA 3GB 250MB hard drive and replaced my old drive with it. This is the only modification I performed. Installed windows, and now it is telling me that my key has expired.



Now, I understand that this is an anti-piracy tool for Microsoft but I looked for their technical support and I when I entered my product number, they are going to charge me the $35 anyway just to send an e-mail.


I just wanted a faster HD.

Has anyone had luck with getting their key re-activated? I hate to waste $35 that I COULD spend on Vista. Although, I would rather wait on Vista as I am nearly broke right now.

You should be able to call M$, tell them you are moving from an old drive to a new drive, feed them the huge activation number and they will tell you how to activate it and it should be free.

Next time use Ghost.

Krom wrote:Next time use Ghost.

True that.

With vista this will just get worse.

Crap, I thought I bought the retail version when I purchased it a year ago. I remembered that OEM versions will say OEM within the number. Tonight I went in to check out my number and it is an OEM version, which is locked to the hard drive.


Anyone have any luck getting an OEM version unlocked from a current drive and locked to a different drive?

Just call them they should activate it for free.
Sometimes they say call the OEM Distributor you bought the license from, hangup and call again and get another operator. I've been through this on my home machine seven times now. Three times in one week. I explained I hookup client's hardrives and OS's to my systems all the time for archiving and troubleshooting. Now I use Linux alot for grabbing data off of customers systems... and on another system.

Technically OEM goes with a system. But hardware such as mice and HD's along with the order are good enough for many distributors.

there is a program called RockXP that can save the WPA.DBL file that holds your registration data.

i used this to just insert my XP Pro registration onto a new installation on a new drive, and it never bothered me again about registering.

[]V[]essenjah wrote:I hate to waste $35 that I COULD spend on Vista.

I have heard some dumb things in my day man - but THAT has to be just about the dumbest thing any person has ever said, in the history of the world!

I think you are much smarter than that.

Mobius, STFU

Mobius wrote:I have heard some dumb things in my day man - but THAT has to be just about the dumbest thing any person has ever said, in the history of the world!

I think you are much smarter than that.

Not sure what logic you are using here.


My train of thought:

We already know that MS has a real habit of releasing buggy OS's, while bragging about how secure they are, and then releasing fixes that contain even worse bugs than the ones that they are supposed to fix.

Example: I have had to roll back IE on quite a few machines because of software conflicts.

I am also fully aware of the fact, that many hardware components have also become far less dependable and support for these parts is getting worse all the time.

I am also fully aware that $35 is just a little nuts for an e-mail that may are may not provide an answere that solves the issue at hand. At the shop where I work every day, you bring in your machine and I check it out for $25, and that is mostly for me, taking time to physically troubleshoot your machine. If you know what the problem is and ask us for advice, we usually are fine, just providing that for free.

Not saying that MS should do the same, but they are one of the richest companies out there. Especially when it is their fault that it's locked down.


However, on the other hand, I do need a 64 bit operating system and eventually, I will be able to receive the service packs I need, and I'm fairly good at bug hunting. I just don't see the point in spending $35 to have MS give me a big FU, when I could spend that on an operating system that I may eventually need to have anyway.


Either way though, money is money and I'm strapped for cash right now.

I think you could be classified as \"a fool\" if you are considering \"upgrading\" to Vista now.

There's simply no reason to do so - none whatsoever.

You can guarantee someone will hack DX10 so it works on XP. That's the only reason I can think of to \"upgrade\" - and DX10 isn't out yet...

I think if you are THAT poor, that $35 is a big deal - then Vista will be so far down your priuority list that it doesn't even feature.

And if you are that desperate to give Bill your hard earned cash, then yeah - that's just dumb.

At least XP had ClearType.

Regardless of if you have a valid point or not Mobius, you could be more polite about it.

Upgrading to Vista is something you should stay away from for at least 6 months, by then driver support and bug fixes should be at a much better level.

upgrading to vista isn't a really good solution.

and no, you don't need a 64-bit OS, unless you have software that can use more that 4 GB of memory. Even then, there are better alternatives to Vista.

The only thing that forces you to upgrade to vista is DX10, and that only makes sense when games stop supporting DX9, and people have DX10 class hardware.

Mobius wrote:At least XP had ClearType.

Vista has ClearType over RDP.

Oh, heh. You're thinking I want to upgrade to Vista NOW. I should have been a little more clear. I'm speaking down the road. I would rather stick with my 120GB with my 40GB external and deal with it for a few months until Vista is decent. I'm not going to touch it right now unless I'm forced into it. It doesn't matter if I spend that $35 now or a year from now. It's still $35 I could have used on Vista. Heck, I could even sell my current 250GB in the shop if need be.

All I'm saying is that if it comes down to buying XP all over again and buying Vista. I would take Vista over XP, ONLY in THAT case, simply for expense and DX10 sake.


No $35 isn't THAT big of a deal but I'm trying to be a bit carefull. I had a very nice stash of money but drained it pretty heavily between the holidays, bills, fixing problems with my car, and a new PC.


What I do spend, I can make up right now but it is a little annoying.


BTW, yes you could have been a little more polite.


But don't worry. I don't plan to update to Vista until it is necessary.

Topher wrote:

Mobius wrote:At least XP had ClearType.

Vista has ClearType over RDP.

you can do that now with VNC.

OEM's do not expire

You just failed to activate and now the install is corrupted

BTW you should have just did a fresh install and copied your data off the old HD

BUBBALOU wrote:OEM's do not expire

Ummmm Bubbalou, you skipped over the material contained in my post and just read the topic didn't you.


This has nothing to do with not activating windows.


This IS a fresh install. It's a brand spanking new hard drive that I just recieved last week. I backed up my data on an external and installed from my Windows XP disk. OEM's DO expire if you install them on multiple hard drives, because it locks itself to your HDD. You can install it as many times as you like on a hard drive, as a matter of fact, I can keep using the hard drive that allready had it installed on it without a hitch. But I can't install it on a new hard drive and physically replace my old one with it.

No, I didn't ghost, and no, I didn't fail to activate it. I activated it within 2-3 minutes after installing it. There were no errors or problems with the installation that I could find. I do this every day for a living. But at work we have a corperate edition or we just use the customer's disk on a drive that they allready own.

you didn't have to stop using your old drive.

just putting the page file on the new drive would lead to a nice performance increase there.

I wondered if I could do that. Not sure how to go about it though. I'm using my old drive right now. So, I could just go ahead and do that. Probably should reformat the SATA though before I try it.

To move the page file, press the windows key and pause together to bring up system properties, open the advanced tab, click the performance button, open the advanced tab again, click the change button in the virtual memory section. Click on the drive letter for the new hard drive, hit custom size, set the minimum size to 1.5 times the size of your system memory, set the maximum size to 3 times the size of your system memory, click the Set button. Click on the C: drive or the current drive you are booting from, set it to \"No paging file\", click the Set button. Press ok till you are back to the desktop, reboot.

[]V[]essenjah wrote:OEM's DO expire if you install them on multiple hard drives, because it locks itself to your HDD.

Send me some of that stuff you are smoking!!

Dude, do I have to hook the drive back up and take a damn screenshot to prove it?

http://img411.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... verel4.jpg


The point I'm making, is that NO, Windows itself is not expired. I'm not trying to say that. What I am saying, is that my allowed number of times to install it on different machines HAS expired. Or so Microsoft says. Anywho, killed it and I'm using my old drive at this point.