Window always activating

[tonylukac]

My windows vista business keeps activating about once a week on my Toshiba laptop. I boot the computer and all of a sudden I get a screen saying activation was successful. I then have to reboot. I reinstalled windows so it's not a virus. Someone must be sending it a command by remote control. I know some people pilfer windows from work, but this is obscene. I got this copy legitamitely by buying windows xp professional during the vista upgrade period; you then get the vista upgrade too. Thought I'd get vista ultimate, but the cheapos gave me this. If there are no clues, I am going back to xp. I'm not spending another $100 for their problem. By the way, the sound drivers are pitiful as I've read often happens when you upgrade windows. Windows sounds are distorted and rattle, but I can live with that. Music plays ok, tho. I will say I got a lot of service out of this xp professional with its iis in writing a website with asp.net.

 

[Tmagic650]

Try updating to Windows 7... Is the laptop keeping the proper time and date?

 

[tonylukac]

I already updated this laptop from windows xp to windows vista. It's 7 years old and not worth wasting another $120 on for win 7 when I could get a new netbook for $200. (The retail upgrade version could run $200). Besides, the drivers are bad in vista and nonexistent for win 7. Tried Ubuntu; no wireless drivers. Only works without encryption. WIndows vista home premium would be more doable but where do you get it? Fry's, Micro Center, and Newegg no longer have it. The clock is at the right time. I often upgraded windows on computers in the past but I think next time I will buy a new computer.

 

[Tmagic650]

7 years old? You were lucky Vista even ran on it, and no wonder you hate Vista. The poor laptop must be slow as molasses and the video must look horrible

 

[tonylukac]

It was labeled "windows vista capable", but vista requires about 4G of memory to run, even tho on the box it only says it needs 512M. This computer only allows a maximum of 1G of memory, and that's what I have. It is slow browsing Techspot with Firefox, but not too bad running Outlook or surfing other sites with one window open. My other rig with 4G runs pretty well with vista home premium. It's not like in the mainframe era where the entire computer had 5M and 200 people ran perfectly fine on it. Digressing. Where is the treasure state?

 

[Tmagic650]

The Treasure State is Montana... The amount of system memory should be a minimum of 2GB for Vista and Windows 7. You're very lucky to have decent video on that laptop. I have begun removing Vista on my customers computers in favor of Windows 7. Vista reminds me of Windows Me before XP came out. Windows Me = Vista

 

[tonylukac]

I did finally find the solution and it was as a previous poster agreed; I didn't have enough memory. The requirement was 1G minimum and the graphics card was using .13G of my 1G, thus not enough. Luckily the Toshiba store stocked a 2G card (no longer in stock anywhere but there) and it breathed new life into the laptop as it really sails. I thought the initial release of vista only required 512M without sp1 or sp2, but I may be wrong.

 

[Tmagic650]

XP, SP3 will hardly run on 512MB system RAM these days... It is 2GB minimum for Windows 7, forget about Vista! I'm running 16GB RAM and multitasking is a breeze on this baby...Thanks for the update

 

[raybay]

I was betting the big bucks on the hard drive... so thanks fo ryour explanation.