I and I'm sure many others are not happy with the way Microsoft put the activation stuff on windows XP home and pro. I have 2 computers that I've been re-installing windows XP on every 30 days because of the activation. Thanks to this I started researching how the activation works.
In my research I've found out that the way windows activates your windows is it takes down serial numbers, MAC addresses(if possible) and a whole bunch of other unique numbers that I can't remember off the top of my head from the following:
-display adapter
-SCSI adapter
-NIC card
-RAM amount range
-processor type
-processor serial number
-hard drive volume and serial number
-CD-ROM drives .. incuding CD-Rs CD-RWs and DVD-ROMs
These are what tells your windows if your trying to activate your copy of windows XP from a different computer or not. What's good about this system is that you can re-install windows on the activated computer as much as possible. The bad about this system is that one major upgrade on your activated computer and chances are you won't be allowed to activate again. On windows's activation they have what's called a "tolerance" what this means is that the parts that were in your computer when it was activated are the ones that are inspected in that computer every single time you activate. Microsoft understands that parts break down so what they created a system where at least 70% of the computers parts that were in the computer when it was activated must be in there when its going to be re-activated
My idea is to take ONLY the hard drive from the two computers that have windows XP home unactivated and then install that hard drive inside my computer temporarily that I activated windows XP from. From this point I would format the hard drive (which is currently temporarily in the place of my computers real hard drive), install windows XP and then activate it. Than i'd be done and the problems solved.
Do you guys think this could work ? Any suggestions or criticism would be appreciated.
