Vista activated ITSELF with Auto Activation turned off!

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Guest

I have always always installed Windows XP without activation so I could
change hardware (mostly disks and partitions) and to integrate programs,
Office 2003, Nero, Thunderbird, Firefox, etc. Whenever I didn't like the
current state of the system, I would do another complete re-install. Since I
have very fast hardware, this has NEVER been a problem.

Vista somehow has changed all of this and I'm angry. I have purchased the
OEM version of Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit. My first attempt was to install
it on a NEW SATA drive that I added to my computer. It is already running a
legal copy of Windows XP on the PATA drive. I configured BIOS to boot the new
SATA drive 1st and I installed Vista from the DVD drive. To my surprise it
forced a dual boot program on my PATA drive which is running Windows XP. That
would be OK, but what if I wanted to remove the PATA drive. I did and Vista
would NOT start because there was no OPERATING SYSTEM (I forgot the exact
message).

My next attempt was to re-install Vista with the PATA drive removed. That
was successfull and Vista could run with or without the PATA drive installed.
I re-installed Vista another time because I didn't like the partitioning I
had created.

Here's my first SURPRISE!
Now the Welcome screen told me I had only 3 days to activate Vista! What?????
This was all done on the FIRST day. I found a website that told me I could
reset the grace period from a CMD window using slmgr and I did. Yesterday, it
showed 0 days for activation, but "slmgr" said I had 29 days so I was OK.

Today on first boot up the help screen showed 27 days left and I thought
"How interesting. Perahps my Windows updates had fixed the Welcome Screen".
Later in the morning as I was transfering some files from another Windows XP
machine, I noticed that Vista had activated itself AUTOMATICALLY!!!!

Now I guess my "installation experiments" have come to a halt! What will
happen it I re-install Vista (to the SAME system of course). This really
SUCKS and I think Microsoft has become to paranoid! I build a lot of systems
for people and I have always bought legal (OEM) versions of Windows. Since I
also have to maintain the systems, I like to know as much as I can about
configurations. That's why I re-install and re-install ... nothing is illegal
here!

Any comments from experts would be greatly appreciated.
 
My guess is you forgot to uncheck the box this one time.

You should have no problems activating.
Worst case is a call to Microsoft, typically toll free and about 5 minutes.
 
During installation there is an option to auto-activate if you are online.
If you do not remove the check from the box, Vista will activate the first
time it sees an internet connection. Remove this check and you have 30 days.

Your Bad!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
I don't think I had that box checked, I'm really careful about that. Why did
the Welcome Center go from 30 days, to 3 days, to 0 days, then to 26 days and
THEN auto activation? I have daily notes on this system and the last time I
ran "slmgr -dli" on 2/4/07 it said 43197 minutes 29 days of Initial Grace
Period before automatic activation. I have not re-installed the system since
then.
 
That is possible, but I'm really careful about that. Why did the Welcome
Center go from 30 days, to 3 days, to 0 days, then to 26 days and THEN auto
activation? I have daily notes on my system and the last time I ran "slmgr
-dli" on 2/4/07 it said 43197 minutes 29 days of Initial Grace Period before
automatic activation. I have not re-installed the system since then.
 
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