Driver Upgrade Requires XP Re-registration???

M

Merc

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 11, 2005
Messages
409
I built my system months ago and have been tweaking and playing with it ever since, including a full case change and several driver and BIOS updates. Well, last night I updated my NForce 4 drivers to 6.66 and XP, upon booting, told me that I have significantly changed my hardware configuration and would need to register XP again.

OK, no big deal except, apparently, XP only allows so many re-registrations before you need to call them and play 60 numbers on the phone with a guy from India. This is what occurred the last time I updated drivers. My question is can Microsoft give me a code that will be good for 5 or 6 new "hardware configuration changes" so I can avoid this pain? Asus and Nvidia are still working the kinks out of SLI and NF4 chipset and I would expect more driver updates in the near future. Also, his is a genuine pain in the ass, Windows shopuld recognize that only the drivers have changed, not the hardware itself.
 
Merc said:
My question is can Microsoft give me a code that will be good for 5 or 6 new "hardware configuration changes" so I can avoid this pain?
Click to expand...

Nope. Normally driver updates should not affect the activation. PA reactivation results from hardware changes over time, apparently the last "update" caused it to request for reactivation.

How many hardware changes have you done over the past 6 months?
 
That is exactly what happened. The system goes through the detecting new hardware loop whenever I load the NF4 driver set. Also, the last time this happened I had updated the mobo BIOS which cause a huge system crash that basically emptied out the DMI and another detecting new hardware loop. Other than that I reloaded XP three-four times total. Twice during the initial build and another time to clear out some corruption that had creeped in.
 
More like 20 minutes but there has to be a better way to do this.
 
What are those?
edit Nevermind, (volume license).

Actuallly I just reactivated windows (resigned myself to the phone call) and it didn't require my inputting any numbers at all! I am not sure why this experience differed from the last except maybe the system crash caused soem issue with my XP load. The rep on the phone informed me that I would have to call for authorization all subsequent XP installs on my system. Well, not this time (scratching his head and wondering about the mystery that is microsoft)
 
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