xp wants reactivating for no reason

Uther · 28 Nov 2009 at 20:50

Today my kid was playing a game on the net,had a problem (game crashed) so restarted,when he did he got the 'windows has detected a major hardware change and needs reactivating in 3 days' message.Now every time he starts we get this message,and it won't let us do it over the net so I have to phone MS to do it.Any idea what happened to give us this message?

IAmATeaf · 28 Nov 2009 at 22:24

Could be anything TBH. I updated the BIOS on my home PC and triggered W7 to request re-activation.

Uther · 28 Nov 2009 at 22:58

Its a strange one all right! I will phone MS and try to reactivate,and see if that cures it.

Rroff · 28 Nov 2009 at 23:01

It happened to me once - for no apparent reason - after using diagnostic startup - suprised online activation doesn't work tho.

Its possible the game crashed or when you restarted windows was in the middle of manipulating a system file that resulted in the authentication being lost.

Mattus · 29 Nov 2009 at 02:41

I guess the crash led to some kind of minor data loss which invalidated XP's record of your hardware.

As usual, activation only inconveniences the honest user.

Uther · 29 Nov 2009 at 10:51

Re activated it this morning,online.

mrgubby · 29 Nov 2009 at 11:04

Mattus said:
As usual, activation only inconveniences the honest user.

Having to phone up & activate inconvenienced me when I was playing with my memory sticks. Everytime I swapped a stick it wouldn't activate over the net & I had to phone up.

The dishonest user doesn't have to activate .......