How many hardware changes till Windows kills itself?

A bit of a dumb question, does Windows still deactivate itself after x amount of hardware changes?

And yes I'm not talking about redoing the entire rig, just like two or three pieces.

nothing is a dumb question, rather this is a good question.

if it does, then i'll just reinstall it ^^

Yes, but it can be reactivated by calling them. It operates upon a hash derived from your hardware configuration - too many items change, and it starts considering it a different system. Contacting microsoft and letting them know you just upgraded some components and its the same PC will allow you to reactivate.

It's not a bad idea to re-install windows after a lot of hardware changes anyways...

Dunno, it kinda takes a lot of time to reinstall. I like this article about the reformat fetish, which covers installing a new motherboard with a different chipset without reinstalling windows:
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/new...-motherboard-without-reinstalling-windows.ars

I.M.O.G. said:

Dunno, it kinda takes a lot of time to reinstall. I like this article about the reformat fetish, which covers installing a new motherboard with a different chipset without reinstalling windows:
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/new...-motherboard-without-reinstalling-windows.ars

Click to expand...

Windows 7 installed on my ssd in <20 minutes. That's not bad at all. But that is a very useful link. Thanks!

Heh, I hear you there, SSDs are awesome. I was more thinking of "the other stuff" that is a pain with windows... It really isn't that bad, but having gotten accustomed to Linux, it seems like a total crapload.

1. Reinstall OS
2. download and install latest drivers one by one
3. Manually install applications one by one
4. Update OS and applications with their own update utilities

On linux, if I wanted to reinstall for some reason, its like this:

1. Backup my list of installed applications
2. Reinstall OS
3. Issue single command to reinstall my list of applications including all app/os updates

So I guess reinstalling windows isn't too bad, but you have to be sitting at the computer for a couple hours typically and hit next next finish a couple dozen times to keep the process moving from beginning to end.... Not a big deal really, but just irks me as cumbersome. If windows developed an online package repository that was integrated nicely, I wouldn't avoid windows reinstalls the way I do.

only time windows decided to deactivate itself was when i changed motherboards. Everything else seems to swap fine for me.

I.M.O.G. said:

1. Reinstall OS
2. download and install latest drivers one by one
3. Manually install applications one by one
4. Update OS and applications with their own update utilities

Click to expand...

Ok I forgot about all of that. Which is a complete and royal pain in the ***. The drivers are much smoother with Windows 7 though. Most of the time Windows Update grabs the new drivers from the manufacturers site automatically. The one exception I've found is gpu drivers.

hmmm, i changed GPU,CPU,MOBO and RAM. Mine is still activated and running fine

kayson said:

The drivers are much smoother with Windows 7 though. Most of the time Windows Update grabs the new drivers from the manufacturers site automatically. The one exception I've found is gpu drivers.

Click to expand...

That's pretty cool, I did not know that.

I.M.O.G. said:

[snip]

On linux, if I wanted to reinstall for some reason, its like this:

1. Backup my list of installed applications
2. Reinstall OS
3. Issue single command to reinstall my list of applications including all app/os updates

So I guess reinstalling windows isn't too bad, but you have to be sitting at the computer for a couple hours typically and hit next next finish a couple dozen times to keep the process moving from beginning to end.... Not a big deal really, but just irks me as cumbersome. If windows developed an online package repository that was integrated nicely, I wouldn't avoid windows reinstalls the way I do.

Click to expand...

Any of you guys use these tools that supposedly automate the install of Windows apps? Any that you like? Hate?

x509 said:

Any of you guys use these tools that supposedly automate the install of Windows apps? Any that you like? Hate?

Click to expand...

It sounds like you are talking about an unattended install. I have tried it a couple times, but personally I was unhappy with the results. I usually got better results when I stripped out the things I didn't need, like extra languages, features I would never use, and drivers that I had no use for. From that point, I would slipstream in my own drivers for the hardware (RAID, sound, GPU, network, etc.), and then parts of the process mentioned earlier were taken care of on first install. The thing about it that started getting on my nerves was the fact that I would have to rebuild my disc every time I needed to reinstall and didn't want to use an old driver.

When I installed my SSD, I got everything going on the SSD, and installed my programs to a separate drive. Once everything was installed to my satisfaction, I simply made an image of the SSD, and placed a copy of that image on both of my mechanical drives. This way, I can just reimage when I need to, after making sure the drive is aligned, and I don't even have to reinstall my programs. Every time I make any significant changes, I just update the changes by creating an updated image.

I.M.O.G. said:

Yes, but it can be reactivated by calling them. It operates upon a hash derived from your hardware configuration - too many items change, and it starts considering it a different system. Contacting microsoft and letting them know you just upgraded some components and its the same PC will allow you to reactivate.

Click to expand...

Good to know. I'll keep that in mind and hopefully I won't have to resort to reinstalling since that takes a while lol (though hearing about SSDs might be tempting to buy and install the OS on it by itself and do programs on my 1TB HDD).

Windows lived through my GPU + cpu upgrade, but when i put a AM3 MoBo and DDR3 ram, it quit. Then i reinstalled it from my flash drive, in less than 15 mins. in a matter of 30 mins, windows installed and updated all of my drivers except my GPU drivers. i went onto the AMD website, typed my graphics card model, and windows operating system and i downloaded and installed the driver in ~40 mins.
the whole process,from putting the system together to installing the drivers, took roughly 3 hours.
And clean installs tend to be better.

It survived through the CPU / GPU upgrade. I'm guessing the board is what kills it.

Chipset differences with mobo swaps most often are what kill an existing OS install, but thats different than windows deactivating its license.