Re: XP Pro activation - false positive

In lieu of any better guess, I'm thinking that it was some kind of count that
got me. I don't remember if it was "one hard drive later" when the Office XP
Activation Widiot kicked in, but if not, it was close to it. Why the XP
Activation Widiot would care about a slave drive is the open question. Why
Office XP would care is an even more open question. Based on my years of
doing software QA, it sure smells like a bug.

"R. McCarty" wrote:

> It's not only hardware, I've actually uninstalled applications that have
> triggered an activation. My understanding of WPA is that the hardware
> hash is examined at every boot to make sure XP is running on the same
> platform. Documentation on Product Activation lists the devices that
> make up the hash (votes). However, I've not seen anything on the boot
> time computation of it. Perhaps it's not only existing hardware but new
> items in the vote tally that factor in. Also, it's the change "Count" that
> causes WPA to roll-over, so maybe a change one day figures into a
> different change say 14 days later. Probably need a mathematician to
> explain how it really works.
>
> "wyocowboy" <wyocowboy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:C57C1D6D-D951-4A52-88EC-AB442886E569@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >I work in a computer repair shop where it is all-too-frequently necessary
> >to
> > slave a customer's hard drive onto my XP Pro SP2 workstation to pull the
> > data
> > off, scan for viruses, etc. I've done this quite a number of times without
> > issue. Recently, I connected a user's USB hard drive to my workstation
> > while
> > it was powered off so that I could copy salvaged data onto it.
> >
> > Shortly after logging on, I was informed that I needed to activate my copy
> > of XP because my machine configuration had "changed significantly" or
> > something to that effect. After deciding that this was just about the most
> > idiotic thing I had seen lately (and I see quite a few), I went ahead and
> > activated it.
> >
> > All was well for a while, until I connected another IDE hard drive to the
> > secondary channel (replacing the CD drive) and now I got a msg saying that
> > because my machine configuration had "changed significantly" I now have to
> > activate my copy of Office XP, so now, something even more idiotic has
> > occurred...
> >
> > Can anyone shed any light on what is going on? I am still booting off of
> > the
> > same hard drive I've been using all along. These have been
> > slave/auxilliary
> > drives. Why the hell should XP or Office care about adding another hard
> > drive
> > to the system? Absolutely nothing else hardware-wise has changed on this
> > machine.
> >
> > The only thing I can think of is that the retarded activation detection
> > doesn't like it when I go back and forth between a hard drive and CD drive
> > on
> > the secondary channel, 'x' number of times.
> >
> > Any of you MVPs care to shed some light on this?
>
>
>
.

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