Reactivation Question re XP

I want to change my motherboard and cpu and keep my old case and
peripherals....Any advice about re-activation of my OS and my MS Office I
want to keep everything else the same and the same HardDrive. My IP address
will be the same?

Thanks JGM


--
"Oh Lord, may I be directed what to do and what to leave undone. " (Fry)

JGM:

Any advice about re-activation

Easy as a phone call. Last time I called it took about a minute.

--
Mac Cool

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 14:19:42 -0500, "JGM"
wrote:

I want to change my motherboard and cpu and keep my old case and
peripherals....Any advice about re-activation of my OS and my MS Office

Yes, do reactivate them unless you just want to try Linux
instead?


I
want to keep everything else the same and the same HardDrive. My IP address
will be the same?

How is your IP address assigned?
If you're not on a lan, windows would randomly pick one in a
series, same as always. If you're on a lan with a DHCP
server, it would assign the IP, unless system is set to keep
a permanent IP already. You'd have to provide details of
your IP config now for us to know what if anything will or
needs changed.

"JGM" wrote in message
...
I want to change my motherboard and cpu and keep my old case and
peripherals....Any advice about re-activation of my OS and my MS Office I
want to keep everything else the same and the same HardDrive. My IP
address
will be the same?

If they are retail versions then simply call MS
If they are OEM versions then the licence is tied to the hardware they were
bought with and you can't change.


Thanks JGM


--
"Oh Lord, may I be directed what to do and what to leave undone. " (Fry)

How is your IP address assigned?, blah...

As far as I know, the IP address of your machine is completely
irrelevant to MS's key generation mechanism. I will not pretend to know
everything about it, but I believe that there are 6 items that are
checked: the CPU, motherboard, amount of RAM, the HDD, the MAC address
of your network card (if you have one) and there is something else that
I have forgotten.

The MAC address is hard-wired into your network card and so will not
change if the IP is changed. Therefore you do not need to worry about
the IP address changing for re-activating it.

What I suggest you do is to phone MS up to activate it (as opposed to
automatically doing it over the net) and write down the configuration of
your system (including the order in which you installed things), the
number that you have to give them and the number that you get back. This
means that you should be able to re-install Windoze on your machine
without phoning them up again, provided you follow the exact same steps
and use the exact same components as before.

Don't forget to note the particular minutiae of your machine like which
cards go in which PCI/ISA/whatever slots, which BIOS revision you have,
which IDE devices are assigned to which channels (also master/slave
arrangements), the partitioning of your HDD(s) and other suchlike.

Possible tips would include not installing network cards/disabling
onboard LAN (so you are not tied to a particular MAC address) and having
the bare minimum of hard drives installed so that the key you get is as
general as possible. Be sure to test your system first to make sure that
it works well, as you may be activating a duff system otherwise. You can
then wipe the HDD and start again, activating 'doze on the most general
combination possible.

I have never tried this (haven't had the guts yet) but it is possible
that windoze will want to be re-activated upon adding a certain (don't
know how many) number of measured components. Therefore this method is
not entirely without risks.

Yes, do reactivate them unless you just want to try Linux
instead?

Or that. In fact, go get Linux now and stick it on a secondary hard
drive. The worst that you will suffer is a bit of lost time installing
and configuring.

If they are retail versions then simply call MS
If they are OEM versions then the licence is tied to the hardware they were
bought with and you can't change.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. My XP is an OEM version, bought with
an HDD (I know of at least one place that allows that) and it is not
permanently locked into my hardware (this copy has gone through a
*complete* overhaul of the system with 2 activations in total).

If you mean OEM windoze as in one shipped with a Dell (or whatever),
then I have no idea as to what happens. It doesn't seem likely that
they'd tie a particular key to a set combination of parts for the
infinite future due to privacy issues, but anything's possible with MS...

On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 18:15:52 +0000, BananaOfTheNight
wrote:

If they are retail versions then simply call MS
If they are OEM versions then the licence is tied to the hardware they were
bought with and you can't change.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. My XP is an OEM version, bought with
an HDD (I know of at least one place that allows that) and it is not
permanently locked into my hardware (this copy has gone through a
*complete* overhaul of the system with 2 activations in total).

It's not a matter of being "locked" into hardware, rather
than an OEM license is tied to the hardware it is sold with.
For OEM whole-system, that is typically the motherboard
considered as "the" tied component. It's not that you
couldn't install Windows on another motherboard, but rather
(IF) the license disallows this, you're not licensed to use
WIndows on the new hardware. IF faced with this scenario
some have reportedly contacted MS and been able to get
reactivated, yet under that license MS is not obligated to
do so (if it's legal to license in this way which is a whole
'nuther sub-topic). Presumably if an OEM license is bought
with a HDD (as per your example) then the license is only
good with that HDD in the system... a bit of a grey area
there, since most other hardware is not necessarily a
singular foundation like a motherboard.


If you mean OEM windoze as in one shipped with a Dell (or whatever),
then I have no idea as to what happens. It doesn't seem likely that
they'd tie a particular key to a set combination of parts for the
infinite future due to privacy issues, but anything's possible with MS...

The particular license key is tied to the one, shipping
license for the system, for the infinite future. The
generated activation key will of course change, if/when
hardware changes. The key to OEM is that it is (AFAIK)
always tied to a particular piece of hardware the license is
sold with... or typically the motherboard when sold with
whole system.

If you change the motherboard then you MUST reformat the harddrive and do a
fresh install of the OS. Otherwise you will experience ongoing nasty
Registry errors and data corruption.

--
DaveW



"JGM" wrote in message
...
I want to change my motherboard and cpu and keep my old case and
peripherals....Any advice about re-activation of my OS and my MS Office I
want to keep everything else the same and the same HardDrive. My IP
address
will be the same?

Thanks JGM


--
"Oh Lord, may I be directed what to do and what to leave undone. " (Fry)

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 16:42:34 -0800, "DaveW"
wrote:

If you change the motherboard then you MUST reformat the harddrive and do a
fresh install of the OS. Otherwise you will experience ongoing nasty
Registry errors and data corruption.


Not necessarily true but thanks for guessing.

Presumably if an OEM license is bought
with a HDD (as per your example) then the license is only
good with that HDD in the system... a bit of a grey area
there, since most other hardware is not necessarily a
singular foundation like a motherboard.

I don't think so: go to
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=134166 and
read the red text, which is copied he

--transcript start--

PLEASE NOTE : To qualify for this licensing you need to purchase either
a system, or a non-peripheral computer hardware component (which will be
an integral part of the computer system which the OEM software will be
installed) such as a motherboard, graphics card, hard disk, processor,
keyboard, mouse. At the SAME time as the Operating System.

--transcript end--

To tie in this license to any particular component would mean having an
immense array of CDs specific to every motherboard, CPU, keyboard,
mouse, HDD, graphics card and whatever that they sell.

It is not locked in, as the booting HDD used in my current system
(Seagate 200GB SATA) is not the same as the one used in my previous one
(Seagate 60GB IDE/ATA). I can remove the 60 and it will boot with no
complaints.


In short, I still stick by my theory that an OEM Windoze bought by you
in a shop along with key parts is not locked to that hardware.

I don't agree that an OEM license bundled with an assembled PC is
technically for that PC only; instead you ought be free to move that
license around to any computer that you own (since what you have is a
windows license, period, not a windows license for a particular
machine). Unless it says on the product documentation or terms of sale
that the WinXP included is specific to that particular machine and is
not to be moved around. If you can show me where it says that then you
have indisputable proof for your side.