[alcidesfonseca]

Windows 7 (and 8?) had an activation procedure that would be blocked if the hardware changed since the last one (I can’t remember the exact hw they hashed). They have since went back on the restriction and windows 10 has more forgiving activation rules.

[asveikau]

I remember hitting that on Vista when I swapped out a motherboard that died, circa 2007. It asked me to call a phone number. So I did. I explained to the phone rep what I did to cause the error. They asked me where I got my copy of Windows. I told them. They unblocked me.

[encom]

How nice of them to grant you permission to run their software on your machine!

[dddw]

... that you already paid for

[asveikau]

To me it was amusing that they put up this barrier, but hired a staff of humans to make sure you could bypass it.

I suppose that could be a gate to prevent people from installing on more machines than the license allows if done at scale. But doesn't lock out legit reinstalls from paying customers. For a cost to MS, to employ that staff.

[ziml77]

I believe the scale part is correct. They don't want anyone sharing the software, but they especially want to stop people from selling illegal copies and to stop businesses from using a single license across a hundred machines

[pjmlp]

It also helps sorting out issues where everything fails.

This is what makes a big difference with doing business with Google and having to deal with bots instead.

[xondono]

They still do, but they are more forgiving in some sense (they fingerprint more info, not just your motherboard so they can detect “small” changes).

I’m still regularly hit with “Activate your account” when I run my windows partition from parallels because the “hardware” has changed!

[pjmlp]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client...