On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 11:23:09 -0400, "Dave" <> wrote:
>I understand that some people are having lots of trouble with activation.
>But I've been running Vista for 5 months now, and only had to activate the
>first time, when I installed Vista Home Premium.
>The only hardware change I've made, is to add a second monitor.
That's the mileage you should expect; anything else would be
unacceptable. Remember, this is an inherently user-hostile technology
that we reluctantly tolerate only because it's "no trouble", right?
>"KILLBOT2007" wrote in message
>> "UnrealBob" wrote:
>>
>>> I've just about had enough of Vista already. It must just be me, but
>>> since i installed Vista 4 days ago, i have had to re-activate it 3 times.
It's only in the last week or so that I've started getting info on how
Product Activation has changed, from XP SP2 to Vista. Up until a post
to this ng, and links from there, all my searches found pages that
claimed or imply Vista's it was "the same" as under XP, like this:
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/ProductActivation.htm
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/1...tion-platform/
(good articles, they just miss the detail we are interested here)
This article senses something is afoot...
http://www.yaps4u.net/mt_archives/20...on_xp_vist.php
....but like me, couldn't pin it down beyond bland assurances the new
version will be "more flexible". It isn't (always); read on!
What I wanted was an update on Alex Nichol's original work...
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php
....which unfortunately he is not here to update :-(
Note: All that I'm writing here is about the "monitored component"
model, as applied to retail and generic OEM licenses; it does not
apply to the BIOS-locked model (large OEM) or Volume Licence Keys
(VLK). There are other changes, well-documented this time, that have
been made in the VLK space; see...
http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/200...vation-for.htm
I suspect there are three possible levels of changes at work:
1) Changed monitored items and weightings
This is what I've (now) read about...
XP "Gold"
- network adapter
- processor type
- processor serial number
- display adapter
- SCSI adapter
- IDE controller
- physical HD
- logical HD volume serial number
- RAM size, as a broad category
- optical drive (i.e. CD, DVD etc.)
10 lives; must have 7 survive else DoS payload triggered
XP "SP1" is the same as above except the "life" for network adapter is
weighted to 3 lives. This makes the payload safer for laptops in
docking stations, and generally more tolerant; you still need 7
"lives' to be allowed to use "your" computer, but now the total has
been raised from 10 to 12 lives. Whatever the logic, I didn't see any
problems in the field (or here) attributed to this change.
Vista
- 2 network adapter MAC address
- 3 processor type
- 1 display adapter
- 2 SCSI adapter
- 3 IDE controller
- 11 physical HD
- 1 RAM size, as a broad category
- 1 optical drive (i.e. CD, DVD etc.)
- 9 BIOS ID
- 2 Audio adaptor
35 lives; must have 25 survive else DoS payload triggered
HD volume serial number has gone; it should never have been there
anyway, as it's not "hardware". Processor serial number applied only
to PIII and could be hidden in CMOS Settings, so wasn't really
hardware either; that's gone, too. For the first time, audio is
tracked as a component, and it looks as if there's confluence between
the BIOS-locked and component-watch models.
What's nasty, is the weighting; unlike the move from XP "Gold" to SP1,
this change makes Vista considerably more trigger-happy. Just
changing the physical HD is enough to pull the pin on the grenade.
2) Charnges in item detail
Does "IDE controller" resolve as broadly as "Intel 965 chipset", or as
tightly as "Primary Master on Intel 965 chipset"? Does switching from
IDE to S-ATA on the same motherboard constitute a change? How about
switching from S-ATA 0 to S-ATA 1 on the same motherboard, as one
newsgroup poster alleged? Has any of this changed, and how?
3) Changes in item existance
Before, you could "retire" an item from active service, and as long as
it was still present in the system, it would still "live". For
example; add a DVD writer but keep old CD-ROM as second optical drive,
or add a new HD as the boot drive but still keep the old one attached
as a second logical drive. Has that changed? Stories about meltdowns
following a switch from one S-ATA to another suggest it has.
>>> Suddenly, out of no where, Windows will pop up saying my
>>> hardware has changed and i have to re-activate, when no
>>> hardware has been changed since i first activated windows
>>> (except plugging in a key drive, which prompted activation)
This is disgusting. A system this buggy that has no value to users
and is inherently user-hostile, should be removed.
We know, from XP experience, that non-hardware changes can trigger
false positives. These are mainly from my own experience:
- update firmware for CD writer; can be "stealthed" by sware updates
- update SVAG drivers, if these stealth in a SVGA BIOS update
- update "core" drivers, such as Intel chipset .inf
- change PIII SN status in CMOS (not personally tested)
- change your network adapter's MAC (not personally tested)
- change network adapter's firmware setting to force UTP
- format C: or convert C: from FATxx to NTFS (volume serail number)
The generic issue is that hardware is increasingly firmware-based,
with versioning and updates, and these non-hardware changes can change
the identity that the activation payload management "sees".
>>> Is this just me? Is it windows or my system, im not going to keep using
>>> vista, for which i have a fully valid license, if i have to phone up and
>>> activate it every few days.
I have seen a few cases of XP SP2 doing exactly this, shedding lives
as monitored by Licenturion's XP Info (alas, there's no Vista
equivalent) and triggering activation demands that in one case the
user just "lived with" until MS's human operators told him he's
"activated too often" and was refused relief.
I've approached MS about this via my lead via email, by face-to-face
questions at international events, and posting to private newsgroups
for comment on the advice of my lead. I've collected info, and still
retain an image of an afflicted PC's C: partition for forensics (with
permission of the user, of course).
I've had no follow-up from MS requesting any further details.
>> ===> I know where you are coming from UnrealBob.I am having similar
>> problems. Maybe some of these guys/girls are not playing on their pc's
>> enough to encounter any problems/glitches, depending on what version
>> they are running!
The experience I've seen with XP suggests this is not the case. These
cases have been fairly rare, but happen - that was confirmed by others
I discussed this with in Amsterdam - and in my own experience, there
has been no external trigger factors at all. I've even seen
Licenturion pick up different mileage within the same Windows session
(i.e. not across restarts) when no USB devices or even optical disks
had been changed or inserted during that session.
Vista's a different OS, with what we now know is a significantly
different payload logic, so XP's issues may not have carried over.
But going by what I read here, it's buggier, and there is still a lack
of action from MS on these issues.
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