My Vista Ultimate OEM De-Activated With No Hardware Changes.

[vnf4ultra]

So, I've made no hardware changes in the past month or two, and today my system says my system has "changed" and needs to be reactivated or it will stop working. So I "re-activate" online, and it says, "the product key you typed is already in use." So now I guess I have to call M$ and piss my day away talking to robots and or foreigners who can't speak English. How can vista deactivate with no changes? I have made 0 changes that involve hardware. I though the vista activation algorithm was supposedly more forgiving, made more with the enthusiast in mind. The only thing like this that's happened to me before was once in xp when I updated my nvidia drivers it made me reactivate, which was weird, but this situation has no cause that I can figure out. Any thoughts? This makes me pretty upset with M$.

Edit: Hmm..., maybe the perfect opportunity to reformat and install vista again, since I'll have to call M$ anyway.

 

[raybay]

Somebody else has a copy of your product ID... and has tried to register with it. .. You will need to talk to Microsoft at the phone number given at the www.microsoft.com registration site.

 

[tifc8lraz]

If you bought a computer with Windows Vista.....someone may have recieved your ID and registered it. I would call Microsoft and I'm sure they'll have you do all kinds of other timewasting things to prove thatyou are the actual ownser .

 

[vnf4ultra]

If I had my product key first(which I did since it activated properly when I installed it), how could someone else steal it while I had it in use?

My guess is that vista, in it's infinite wisdom, has determined that my computer has changed in some way that I'm unaware of (maybe software installed?), and has de-activated, and won't re-activate over the internet, since it's oem. I believe oem can only be activated over the internet twice, and I've already activated this copy of vista twice. No, I dont have it on two machines, I installed it at first, had major issues which hosed the install, so I had to install and activate again.

Well, I guess I have to call M$ and complain. I'm sure they'll give me a key, they always do when I call regardless of why I need one.

<depressed>And yet again M$ pushes me further toward Linux/Mac...</depressed>

Edit: Called M$, who didn't even question why I needed re-activation, and got reactivated. Quite a hassle for no good reason IMO.

 

[raybay]

The solution will likely come in the phone call. Usually they just get you to promise you only have the install on one computer, and all is well.
However, we have had enormous numbers of duplicate installs in Mexico and Thailand without knowing where they got the original product key. I suspect somebody has figgered out the algorithm for creating the numbers.
Microsoft is keeping mum, of course.