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People have been concerned about how Windows Vista would cope with new hardware for a long time now. Our own Will Smith wrote about it a year ago. Although Microsoft quickly adjusted its licensing terms before releasing Windows Vista in its final form to help assuage concerns from hardware experimenters (that's us, folks!) worried about being locked out of our Windows Vista installations - it's happening anyway.
Tuesday, Vista user James Bannan, writing for Australia's APCmag.com website, confirmed any hardware maven's worst fears: not only would Microsoft Vista deactivate after giving only three days notice, but device driver changes could trigger deactivation!
Before you suspect Bannan of going on an update spree that left nothing but the chassis, consider this: the last hardware change he'd made was swapping his DirectX 9 graphics card for a DX10 card. So, what triggered the three days to RFM mode (which leaves you with a web browser that works for a half-hour)? A driver change!
Although Windows Vista believed that Bannan had changed his disk controller, which, when added to the graphics card change, was significant enough in Microsoft's mind to trigger deactivation, he hadn't. He'd updated the Intel Matrix Storage Manager program, which is used on Intel motherboards that feature RAID-compatible I/O controller hub (South Bridge) chips. Essentially, the driver change was mistaken for a hardware change.
Bannan was able to reactivate his copy of Vista, but had to use the telephone to do it. Of the over 90 replies to this story, others had much unhappier outcomes:
To learn how to avoid these problems, keep reading.
Comments are closed on this article
WesInSV
June 15, 2008 at 2:58pm
Where is the "how to" on how to reset the 30 days of activation? I'd seen it somewhere ... in print.
Marcus_Soperus
June 19, 2008 at 4:12pm
Brian Livingston is just one of many sources describing the use of slmgr to reset the activation clock: http://windowssecrets.com/comp/070215/#story1
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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
Marcus_Soperus
October 29, 2007 at 3:00pm
The Contacts page at Microsoft.com is one place to start complaining about Vista product activation:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;CNTACTMSIt might also be useful to complain to Microsoft's public relations (PR) firm, Waggoner-Edstrom (W-E).
Microsoft's PR contacts page is at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/PR_Contacts.mspx
See the general contact list for W-E at http://www.waggeneredstrom.com/we_worldwide/contact_us.asp
See the Microsoft PR contacts page for W-E phone numbers relating to various Microsoft product families.
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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
HeartBurnKid
October 29, 2007 at 10:42am
As if intrusive DRM mechanisms on media weren't enough, now you can't change a device driver without the OS throwing a hissy fit?
Sorry, but I have better things to do with my time than sit on hold to try to convince some CSR that I'm not a thief. I'll stick with XP for now, and switch to Linux sometime between now and when Microsoft grows the balls to end-of-life it.
Pinkyblister
October 28, 2007 at 6:44pm
All right everyone: some people out there should have websites, email addresses, street addresses, and phone numbers to complain to Microsoft. I would appreciate anyone who has such to post them here and in the MPC Forum as well. Complaints sometime work with Microsoft-something needs to be done now.
dave23d
October 28, 2007 at 7:22pm
You could also demand a VISTA refund if you wanted too.
Love Linux and 3D Linux Games :)
dave23d
October 28, 2007 at 5:16pm
Linux rocks. Oh, its free and you can always try to see if you MS Apps work on linux, by using WINE.
Otherwise you can use a VM to run both Linux and Windows XP at the same time :-)
Thats a win win for everybody.
Love Linux and 3D Linux Games :)
Morichalion
October 28, 2007 at 8:05am
I don't get why people are harping on the joy of running Mac OSX. It's been my experience that Apple is pretty iron-fisted on how their hardware and software can be used...
That being said, I have no idea why anyone really, REALLY needs vista.
The only reason that comes to my mind, even if I'm thinking REALLY hard about it, is playing bleeding-edge games at launch. Almost everything else can be done w/ free software.
If you absolutely MUST run a particular kind of application, see if it can run on a different operating system. I mean, most of the people I talk to only use a web-browser, an email client, and a word processor. Occasionally, they'll do some image editing or use a spreadsheet. Download Ubuntu, and you have all that. The learning curve is slightly steeper, but your savings can run on up into the thousands of dollars, depending on the software you need.
If you don't mind waiting a 'till a little bit after launch (and maybe learning a little bit, too) you can even run your games on linux with WINE. Okay, this solution isn't worry-free, since the game studios aren't supporting WINE, but you can look at WINE's website to see if any of your games'll run.
Granted, There are those applications that WILL NOT run on anything but a Windows or Apple platform, so switching to linux might not be the best solution. But w/ the pain people are feeling with windows, they really should step back and see what other options there is out there.
Scrubs
October 27, 2007 at 2:19pm
This is all well and good, except for the fact that some updates needed to establish a stable Vista environment aren't even available until you've activated, so you're taking a risk doing the activation. Luckily it worked for me, but could have gone the other way and then I'd have been ditching MS entirely.
pcfxer
October 27, 2007 at 7:14am
Ergo, Mac OS X. Now why can't Apple see the slight extension of using and supporting OS X on PCs? Apple could Drop support for old computers like Pentium Ds and such and only support new hardware just like their own comps.
That said, OS X is based off of BSD and the mach kernel so most of the support for old hardware is built into OS X.
Marcus_Soperus
October 27, 2007 at 7:25am
I agree. MacOS X has driver support for both Intel and AMD processors, and with MS's missteps on rolling out Vista (and supporting Windows XP users), they could make a bundle by opening up MacOS X.
Another benefit to users of having a second commercial OS on the table is that Microsoft would realize it no longer has a monopoly - and would probably drop a lot of its anti-consumer activation policies - and build a better OS.
DOS old-timers might remember how bad MS-DOS had gotten by version 4.0. Then, Digital Research's DR-DOS 5 came out and actually beat MS-DOS 4.0 in features and capabilities in almost every way. Microsoft's MS-DOS 5.0 "borrowed" a lot of features from its competitor, and Microsoft once again took the DOS market seriously - thanks to serious competition
Some would say that Linux will provide the same competition for Windows, but I don't think it will until we see a breakout distro, complete driver support, and broad application support that the public knows about. Right now, Linux is still perceived as a "propellorhead" product without mass appeal.
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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
elburro
October 27, 2007 at 8:00am
You guys forget one thing. Apple is even more controlling than Microsoft is. Apple wants to tell people what hardware to use, how to use it, and when to use it. They wouldn't even let people install 3rd party apps on thier iphone untill they were preety much forced to.
dannysob
October 26, 2007 at 9:38pm
That's one of many reasons is better to have cracked version instead of buying, something like wow.
