Install extra RAM = unable to (re)activate VISTA

S

schoenda

Gawd
Joined
Apr 8, 2003
Messages
860
So, like many of us I throw an extra 2 gigs in, no other changes...everything is great, right? Little while later pop-up tells me I need to reactivate windows..ok, cool, nice to know Microsoft has thier latex gloved hand on my testicles. So I click to activate and after a second of ernest blue progress bar action I get, "Windows is unable to activate because this product key is already in use." Ok, I get 2 options...1) Buy a new license key, or 2) Enter another lisence key. (1) Stick hard spike in rectum with left hand, 2) Stick hard spike in rectum with right hand.)

So I am on hold for 30 minutes with microsoft right now.

Wish me luck and just beware you MAY need to set aside a few hours for this if you want to be a good little consumer and buy new hardware.

-Dave
 
That blows! Can you perform a clean install to get around the activation issue whenever you switch out hardware?
 
OK, over an hour on the phone and 7 transfers later....first a very nice and completely useless woman who spoke clear english, next a very nice and completely useless woman who spoke stilted english with a heavy Indian accent, next, a very nice and completely useless woman who spoke stilted english with a heavy Indian accent...(possibly the same woman altering her voice to pretend to be another person, not sure)...next the exact same woman from step 3...after another 10 minute hold...a very nice genius of a man who spoke stilted english with a heavy Indian accent, after some discussion they have now arrived at the conclusion that, "My problem is that I have changed my hardware and so I cannot activate windows.", Well, hoopdydoopdy la la wow, R E A L L Y???? Could that be the problem?

No S**T. This gentleman obviously just arrived from Scotland Yard.

Anyway this guy determines that I need to call a completely different phone number, and no, sorry, he cannot transfer me.

Next I get a computer and read off the 800,000,000 digit product ID, the it tells me I cannot activate windows...then, again, transfer to...get ready....I SWEAR TO GOD the same lady I spoke to in step 3...she gives me my new product ID and I activate my product...NO PROBLEM.

I really could not make this up.

I am not really surprised...just be warned my friends. I mean, MY GOD, they must get this issue thousands of times a day...how can they not be prepared to recognize the problem immediately?
 
Daddy, I don't know....it would have been much faster and I am sure it would not have worked for the same issue..
 
Out of curiosity what sort of license was it?

Upgrade?
Retail?
OEM?
Powertogther?
Other Promotion?

I am just curious what type and what version (Home, Ultimate, etc.) you have.
 
I purchased vista home premium retail at Office Max, then I upgraded to ultimate from the Microsoft web site...I guess that makes it sort of retail and sort of upgrade....this really confused the product support people who apparently can only read from a flowchart.
 
Well with it only being out a few weeks they are still learning and vista's upgrade paths are numerous.

I hope you find a solution to your problem.
 
schoenda said:
So, like many of us I throw an extra 2 gigs in, no other changes...everything is great, right?
Click to expand...


Are you really sure that 'no other changes' occurred? The RAM upgrade didn't, for example, trigger RAM settings changes which impacted on CPU settings and thus made the CPU also appear to be different. Or any other such thing? Sometimes unexpected results like this can occur. It's an anomoly of PCs and their interaction with the activation checks.

Anyways, part of the activation check this time around is an increased incidence of activation failures when the key is used to install and activate quite soon after the time it was last used. That's a piracy-combatting mechanism.

Simple solution, to avoid potential poroblems? Don't activate until you have the system set up and configured, and you've confirmed that everything is working to your satisfaction ;)
 
I am really much better now, tx Grentz...

Makes you wonder though...where will we be in 10 yrs from now in the corporation v/s pirate cat and mouse game? Jeez, I am guessing I would have had less trouble using that upgrade exploit or getting a pirated torrent or something...ok, maybe not less trouble, but you get the point.

Anyway, Microsoft did a better job writing Vista than I could have...right. Alls well that ends well...what happens when I upgrade another few hardware pieces and they start to get suspicious of me? I GET SCREWED, thats what.
 
Why have the Microsoft leg humpers been telling us that the trigger that forces activation after changing hardware is more robust in Vista than XP when all he changed was some lousy ram? How the fuck is that more robust? Once again we have been fed bullshit. If something like this happens to me I will blow a blood vessel. I can already feel it popping and haven't even had to call to reactivate yet.
 
Catweazle...after I got it all sorted out I read your post and got curious...FYI...in BIOS exact same mem timings, FSB, processor/multiplier/voltages....oh well...
 
Gatticus said:
Why have the Microsoft leg humpers been telling us that the trigger that forces activation after changing hardware is more robust in Vista than XP when all he changed was some lousy ram? How the fuck is that more robust? Once again we have been fed bullshit. If something like this happens to me I will blow a blood vessel. I can already feel it popping and haven't even had to call to reactivate yet.
Click to expand...

I have already switched RAM w/o problem on my Vista machine. Plus it is setup so you have to hit "Activate" and you are good to go if it does popup.

This case must have just had a little bug which happens with any software.
 
How soon after you first activated Vista was the thing triggered, for interest's sake?

(By that I mean how soon after did you bung the RAM in?)
 
Well I said that confusingly, when I changed my RAM it didnt ask me to activate or do anything and still to this day has not.

But, if it WERE to ask, it should just be a simple press of the activate button is what I was saying :cool:
 
Oh! Just realised the full upgrade path of what you've done. Bad move!

You've purchased a retail license. Then you've used Anytime Upgrade and effectively reduced the conditions under which you can use your license. an anytime upgrade license is more restricted than a retail license, because it only allows for one migration.

I'm seeing quite a few reports of people having difficulties with Anytime Upgrade installations and activations. I'm also see similar reports for people (at least here in australia) trying to install and activate with the key codes distributed with MAPS pack media.
 
Grentz, I had vista up since release date, just today banged in 2 more gigs of RAM, 5 minutes later the reactivation pop-up and the rest is history...I thought it would be simple too...I hope you never have to walk this mile in my shoes.

Catweazle, good to know I screwed myself...ahhhh, time for a cigarette.
 
if I have these activation issues I'm going to hit someine at microsoft in the face with their stupid side tilt open box thing.

I already rma'd off my video card, and using one temporarily. It didn't ask me to reactivate
but I am buying new memory. If I run into this all hell is going to break loose
 
I'm not so sure if that's a reasonable conclusion to draw or simply a knee-jerk reaction to initial teething problems. I've not seen much positive to counteract the negative stuff I've seen so far, though.


The bit about restricting the thing to a single migration puzzles me. I can't see rhyme nor reason for its inclusion. But I'm also sorta suspecting that it might prove to be a non-issue anyways. At face value it appears that after somebody uses Anytime Upgrade to get a more feature filled version than they initially purchased they'll then be restricted to only a single transfer of license to an upgraded system. But maybe there's some practicaliy involved which will effectively render that redundant. I'm not sure. I can't quite get my head around the process yet, not having run such an upgrade to check it out.
 
It cost me less than the price of two new release PC games to have Vista home Premium on my system, with a legitimate transferrable license. I've no need to upgrade it. I've no problems with installing and activating it, and won't have in the future. I'll not need to worry about keeping it updated or hide/guard my comments about it.

I personally think that it's the pirates who are the losers, rather than the winners ;)
 
schoenda said:
I am not really surprised...just be warned my friends. I mean, MY GOD, they must get this issue thousands of times a day...how can they not be prepared to recognize the problem immediately?
Click to expand...


Sounds like you called the wrong phone number - next time call the product activation phone number first.
 
I was wondering, if I install Vista and everything's fine, then I decide to OC my CPU, would I have to reactivate Vista again everytime I change the OC settings ?
 
Nope. Not at all. the query above was simply exploring a possible way that multiple hardware changes might have been triggered.

Overclocking your CPU shouldn't affect anything at all, except perhaps your system stability if you don't know what you're doing!
 
Thanks for the quick response. I keep hearing about Vista not liking hardware upgrades/changes, which really sucks because I change parts fairly often. So I was just wondering how sensitive it really is.
 
people keep hearing lots and lots of scary stories, and THAT really sucks because most of them are a crock of......
 
The other day I had something similar happen. My wife's PC had XP upgraded to Vista Home Premium via the family pack deal. Since installing Vista there were hard disk errors showing up in the logs and the box would frequently hang. The disk would not make it through the scandisk check without just sitting there. Not totally sure whether it was the OS or the drive I pulled a secondary drive out of my box and swapped them. I reinstalled everything and went to activate and was given the same this key is already in use error. Nothing was changed but the hard drive. I did the phone activation and spoke to an indian person who asked me about what version of vista it was and how many computers it was installed on. After telling him just this computer a couple times he gave me a key to enter and then vista activated. It was kind of a pain but took only 15 minutes so it wasn't that bad. The drive in her PC seems to work fine in my box by the way, so I am not sure if there was something with the drivers in vista and that particular setup or what.
 
My sympathies with the OP, and good luck!.

I think MS has made what should be a simple procedure into an upgrade
fiasco. I think it all started with 5 versions and figuring out do we need OEM or retail.
The install/upgrade paths are still not clear for me, and I've read most of the
posts here over the last 2 weeks.

I'm considered a professional working as a programmer in an IT department and I'm
confused, so to those who have no idea at all...bad news.
 
I had installed Home Premium (OEM) and found out that my 3com 3c905 network card (probably the most popular network card ever) was not supported.

I changed it to a Linksys LNE100TX and worked fine, no reactivation needed, but it did want to redo the performance eval.
 
Did you install any drivers after activation… the driver changes can appear as hardware changes, so several driver changes combined with the memory change could have triggered activation. I have seen this happen in XP.

Never activate if you can help it until all drivers are installed.
 
Here's a thing to try based on my own experience:

Since installing and activating the Vista Home premium upgrade, my motherboard went kaput. So, while I was installing a new mobo, I added new HDD so I could set up a 1 TB Raid 0 and a dedicated 3rd HDD for holding important stuff. I got my item, installed everything, then used the install twice work around so I didn't have to install XP again. (if you don't know, you can install vista without a key first, then once install, run the upgrade install program entering the activation key and you can upgrade without having XP installed :) )

So anyway, I got it installed and went to activate and got the "key in use, blah, blah, blah" message. Here's what to do. Unplug your network cable so you are not connected to the internet. Reboot. Upon reboot try to activate again. This time there should be an option that says something like "show me other ways to activate." One is over the phone with the 800#. I called in, punched in my code, which of course it couldn't activate. I then was transfer to a nice young India lady (god, I love that accent) who I explained what happened and she gladly gave me the numbers to punch in and activate. Whole process took less than 10 minutes and she never questioned why i was reactivating twice in 2 weeks with different hardware once I said my mobo went bad.
 
In retrospect I certainly should have called the product activation line first...duh, ok, me stoopid, but it is that line that recomends you use the internet if possible because it is "much quicker"...and this had already failed for me...I figured the activation line would be automated only and send me to customer support when it failed....oh well, that really isn't my point though. I have no doubt thousands of people are having no problems at all...in fact Vista ran quite nicely for me out of the box and is running beautifully with the 4 gigs now, no problems since I got the reactivation thing hammered out.

Just take my experience for what it's worth. I think anybody who upgrades/tinkers with thier system often should be AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID.
 
defuseme2k said:
if I have these activation issues I'm going to hit someine at microsoft in the face with their stupid side tilt open box thing.
Click to expand...

Haha...that was the first thing that pissed me off about Vista. My box jams and is a PITA to get open. I broke my thumbnail trying to get it open. The person who designed that box should be shot.
 
I used vista for 3 days and then formatted the machine. I activated it 3 times in 3 days and on the 4th activation, still day 3, it would not validate after I put in a better video card.

I simply used home edition to 'play around' with. It was a HUGE PITA. XP only wants to reactivate on the occasional motherboard replacement or windows repair. Vista dumped a load on my face after the following:
1) initial activation
2) ghosting to larger HD
3) adding another video card
4) this is where i formatted
 
schoenda said:
Just take my experience for what it's worth. I think anybody who upgrades/tinkers with thier system often should be AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID.
Click to expand...

Yea, but I've had the same thing happen with XP when I swapped ram too. I've had to reactivate XP twice when I never swapped any hardware at all, for some reason it was activated by flaky software or something. Thing is they said Vista is more robust about hardware changes than XP and your experience, and other peoples, seems to suggest that is not true.
 
Gatticus said:
Yea, but I've had the same thing happen with XP when I swapped ram too. I've had to reactivate XP twice when I never swapped any hardware at all, for some reason it was activated by flaky software or something. Thing is they said Vista is more robust about hardware changes than XP and your experience, and other peoples, seems to suggest that is not true.
Click to expand...
The major problem might be that most folks see that box that says activate online and just leave it checked. You should uncheck it and get the 30 day trial, and use that to config your system BEFORE you activate. This might not work with the double install thing, but oem buyers and others might benefit by this info.
 
BIGDADDY51 said:
The major problem might be that most folks see that box that says activate online and just leave it checked. You should uncheck it and get the 30 day trial, and use that to config your system BEFORE you activate. This might not work with the double install thing, but oem buyers and others might benefit by this info.
Click to expand...

Yea, I saw that, clicked on it and now have what? 3 or 4 days to activate instead of the 30 days? Sheesh, and I was planning to add 1 more gig of ram to Vista. I have to do it like today and hope the hardware is good before I activate Vista tomorrow! Ugh.
 
this is why i've held off activating until the last possile second..
 
crap ive got 1gb in my system now and just had to RMA my other gig caue the stick was bad..... well ive already activated vista

:( ughhh i dont want to reinstall i just finished install all my programs and downloading stuff
 
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