Question about 'How do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?'
Sunday, February 20, 2005 at 12:54 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by lmc
(7 messages posted)
I have a question about How
do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?:
I believe that I've heard that every once in a while XP' WPA (and other activated
products, like Office XP/2003 and development apps) phone home to make sure all is
well. That would kill the suggestion in the notes above that it may be possible
to use an activation on several computers by lying about moving a single copy to
a new computer. Does anyone know if that is really the case?
WRT using an OEM disk - an OEM disk is Windows plus whatever the OEM wanted to
add to it, including, possibly, software to detect what model/mfgr/SN the Windows
is running on and refuse if it's the wrong one. I've never been able to successfully
"clean" such a disk back to the MS generic product, though I know that people claim
it can be done. The only safe disks to use on other computers are real, MS generic
disks. MS probably doesn't really care whether these disks get copied and distributed
or not, because their real defense is in the WPA; professional admins don't keep
the hundreds of disks about that would be needed if this were the case, and besides,
they build new ones through "slip-streaming" with MS' full blessing when a new SP
comes out. MS even designed the system to do that, and publishes the procedure.
However, don't simply take my advice as legal - I'm not a lawyer and I don't work
for MS. Besides, lawyers in general can be very anal about their client's priviledges,
and the disks still say "Do not copy" on them.
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 | Question about 'How do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?' (lmc: Sun, Feb 20, 2005, 12:54 pm) |
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