reinstall only allowed x amount of times?

osaddictosaddict London, UK
edited September 2006 in Science & Tech
Hey All,

When someone leaves and their pc goes over to someone else- I prefer to reformat it and start over- nicer for both people I think.

However, I seem to recall reading somewhere that when you reinstall xp home that you can only do this 3 times or something before it fails to work and you have to contact microsoft for confirmation or something?!

I am using oem dell cd's (these are dell machines) should this be a problem? (The majority of pc's have been reinstalled at least once or twice already- if doing it a third or fourth time means problems I might just clean it as best as poss and not do a full reinstall?

(This was information from what I consider to be a slightly iffy source- far from an expert or informed user- but still made me want to verify it one way or another!)

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    It's been a long time but I believe that it is indeed true you can only activate by way of interweb 3-5 times before you have to start calling them. If memory serves, however, you only need to do this if the hardware changes substantially each time, indicating three distinct PCs. It's not a huge deal, though.. At worst, you talk to an operator and indicate what kind of PC it came from, they check a database to confirm that the ID# it generated based on your key and hardware set is really the right set of hardware. They then read a key back to you, and you're done.

    It's been a while, though.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    I've had to call them for xp pro. They just asked for my cd-key, and what problem I was having. I told them I upgraded my pc, and that I couldn't activate xp (this was the problem). Apparently, they just changed some entry in the activation server (probably reset my activation count), and I could activate over the internet afterwards.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    I do it all the time, it's a huge pain. You call them, you type in something like 48 numbers, you wait for an operator with a thick accent, you explain to them why you need to re-activate, they make you feel like a criminal, they ask you what kind of hardware it is, they ask if the thing is installed on more than one PC, you tell them no, they say okay, they read back another 48 numbers to you (in their thick accent), you type them all in, you're done.

    It's a 10 minute ordeal at best. I hate it.
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited September 2006
    hmm, so this would only be the case if there was a significant hardware upgrade then?

    Would just the usual stuff like memory upgrade, change dvd burner etc be enough to trigger the problem- or is it only serious stuff like changing the mobo or something!
  • WingaWinga Mr South Africa Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    Iv'e had a situation where I added an extra harddrive and it asked me to re-activate. The HD was new and hadn't even been formatted, so its not like it had an OS on it or anything like that. What made it worse is that instead of allowing the cursory 3 days to re-activate it shut down there and then and refused to load to windows without re-activation.

    I don't consider that a major harware change and it hasn't done it when I've added HD's before, so I can only assume that OS had been loaded a number of times on that PC already or the hardware had been changed often.

    Prime's right about the phoning in being a huge pain. The way they grill you you'd swear you were up for murder.
  • jhenryjhenry California's Wine Country
    edited September 2006
    Changing the video pops it every time for me. It drives me nuts...
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