On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:47 PM, Frank Steinmetzger <war...@gmx.de> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 09:31:13PM -0500, Mike Edenfield wrote: >> > From: Dale [mailto:rdalek1...@gmail.com] >> > Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 8:06 PM >> >> >> > Your reply made me think of something. I had a XP reinstall once that >> > required a number from MS because of the new mobo and hard drive. They >> > said it recognized the change in the serial numbers. When I ran into >> > that before tho, it installed fine but gave 30 days to put in the >> > number. Does winders 7 have something similar? > > That's the Product Key, being 5x5 characters in size *looking at sticker on > bottom of laptop*. Once you entered the key, Windows activates itself online. > If that fails (e.g. if you used the key too often or the key is blacklisted, > etc), you can reactivate Windows via a phone call to MS. > >> I *think* you get a grace period after that to re-activate your system but >> it's been a while since I had that happen to me. > > Incidentally, I have this very situation in a virtual XP right now. Once that > grace period is over, it shuts you out completely. When I try to log in it > tells me that I need to activate it before I can log in. My choices are to > either enter a key into a dialog or to not do so, in which case I get thrown > back to the login screen. Neat, huh. > > Windows 7 gives you some more leeway, in that it lets you log in to your > desktop, but IIRC the background is blackened and all you can open is IE to > open the MS site or summit like that. > > There is a command which can rearm the 30 days counter at most twice, as long > as it hasn't run out yet.
XP used to offer more leeway than you currently get, but there's a nasty version dependency sequence where you need a newer version of something (I forget what) in order to continue Windows Updates, but to install that newer version, you need to satisfy WGA, which I believe is the tool that forces you to activate before accessing a desktop. Which means getting a fully patched system before entering a key is difficult, if not impossible. Where I work, it had been recommended to us that we use the grace period to avoid burning our activation keys when we went to do testing of our software. Having WGA and the "enter a key or forget about logging in" misfeature land happened only a few weeks later. *sigh* -- :wq
