On 9/15/05, James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com> wrote:
Sunny wrote:
On 9/14/05, Carl Hartung <suselinux@cehartung.com> wrote:
tech support forum, either. When I read his post I concluded that his was an XP problem: the hardware profile will no longer match the signature
On Thursday, September 15, 2005 @ 8:17 AM, Sunny wrote: that is
embedded in XP if he just backs everything up, replaces the *system* drive and restores from the backup. XP will think it's been pirated. He's better
XP allows 3 minor changes before it requires reactivation, and I had luck with replacing a hard drive.
Apparently, adding memory is not considered a minor change. A while ago, I added some memory to a friend's notebook. That was enough to require reactivation.
Strange, as seen in my other thread I mentioned, I replaced HDD, and added memory, and I did not needed reactivation. But ... maybe because it was with the original XP installed by the manufacturer of the laptop. As far as I know, branded OEM installs does not require activation. I may be wrong.
But for sure I have added memory in the past for my home comp and it was working.
Most probably your friend have done some more changes before that, like new HDD, etc., so they end up with 3 mods.
-- Svetoslav Milenov (Sunny)
I had just had the same thought. I added memory with no problem either but, like you, my Windows software was on this Dell machine when I bought it. I actually had to fully restore it once from an ASR backup. During the first phase, when you would normally be prompted for a registration number, I didn't have to do that. Not sure how that works. At the time, I had two Dell machines with Windows and two installation CDs. I re-installed the other Windows op system from one of the CD's also. Either I got lucky and happened to use the correct CD each time (they're just in a stack of CDs I have) for each machine or there's something built into the CDs themselves (or in the computer firmware) that knows I'm legit. If either CD works for either machine, it's probably something built into the firmware on the machine(?). Greg Wallace