Offline time equals Windows activation woes

Fayla · 11 Oct 2010

If I take my machine offline for a day or so, I get a little message in the bottom-right corner of the screen telling me that my copy of Windows seven is no longer activated.

To resolve that I have to go back online and then into the control panel, opening the system area and suddenly Windows remembers that it's official+activated.

Why can't my Windows seven work just like my old Windows XP did and actually REMEMBER that it is activated?

Bill2 · 11 Oct 2010

Interesting. What kind of license do you have- retail or oem or system builder? Offhand I can just think of the permissions problem that sometimes causes random deactivation, but I dont know what being offline has to do with it. In any case follow the steps on this MS page.

Windows 7 displays "Windows is not Genuine" with an error code of 0x80070005

Another thing you can do is to download the MGADIAG tool from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012. Run it once when you are activated and once when you're not. Each time, click on the Copy button at the bottom of the tool, paste into Notepad and save as .txt file. So you'll end up with 2 files, name them sensibly and upload here. I'll take a look at them.

c59 · 11 Oct 2010

I had a similar problem. I'm not sure that the following solved it for me but it appears to have. You may not have the same green setting but is there some hardware you don't always connect?
My motherboard has 2 Ethernet ports and the bios has a Green setting for them. If the green setting is active during power up it checks the ports if no cable is present it disables the ports in bios-so windows doesn't see them. So, if I did some work and plugged the ethernet cable into a different port windows would see it as a hardware change- I had to call in twice to reactivate over the phone- the last time (after turning off the green setting-so windows always sees the ports- it reactivated over the net and has stayed activated.

Fayla · 11 Oct 2010

The computer came pre-installed with Windows Seven Premium 64 bit, but I used the Windows Anytime upgrade option in the control panel to upgrade it to Windows Seven Professional 64 bit.

Windows License Type: Retail

It could be a permission issue. So I ran through all the steps in the first link and rebooted. So far it is remembering that is activated, even when I take the network cable out then recheck in the system control panel.

I downloaded and ran the program on the second link. Now I have a saved text file of info when it is activated, but right now Windows is remembering that it is activated. So a text file of when it is not activated will be delayed.

Bill2 said:

Interesting. What kind of license do you have- retail or oem or system builder? Offhand I can just think of the permissions problem that sometimes causes random deactivation, but I dont know what being offline has to do with it. In any case follow the steps on this MS page.

Windows 7 displays "Windows is not Genuine" with an error code of 0x80070005

Another thing you can do is to download the MGADIAG tool from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012. Run it once when you are activated and once when you're not. Each time, click on the Copy button at the bottom of the tool, paste into Notepad and save as .txt file. So you'll end up with 2 files, name them sensibly and upload here. I'll take a look at them.

Fayla · 11 Oct 2010

I only have one Ethernet port and one wifi adapter, but I almost never use wifi.

My printer is usually off, but I keep the external hard drive on most times.

c59 said:

I had a similar problem. I'm not sure that the following solved it for me but it appears to have. You may not have the same green setting but is there some hardware you don't always connect?
My motherboard has 2 Ethernet ports and the bios has a Green setting for them. If the green setting is active during power up it checks the ports if no cable is present it disables the ports in bios-so windows doesn't see them. So, if I did some work and plugged the ethernet cable into a different port windows would see it as a hardware change- I had to call in twice to reactivate over the phone- the last time (after turning off the green setting-so windows always sees the ports- it reactivated over the net and has stayed activated.

Ponmayilal · 17 Oct 2010

c59 said:

I had a similar problem. I'm not sure that the following solved it for me but it appears to have. You may not have the same green setting but is there some hardware you don't always connect?
My motherboard has 2 Ethernet ports and the bios has a Green setting for them. If the green setting is active during power up it checks the ports if no cable is present it disables the ports in bios-so windows doesn't see them. So, if I did some work and plugged the ethernet cable into a different port windows would see it as a hardware change- I had to call in twice to reactivate over the phone- the last time (after turning off the green setting-so windows always sees the ports- it reactivated over the net and has stayed activated.

Slightly deviating, you do have a valid point.

Reading about Windows Product Activation (WPA) for XP, I gathered that a set of hardware in a PC cast votes for the WPA algorithm.(there is even a software to let you know which ones are casting the yes votes at any point of time.) While all other devices cast one yes vote each, a network card with its specific MAC ID, is entitled to cast three yes votes. The author of the article went on to suggest that even if you do not use a network (in good old days) buy a cheap network card and plug it into your MB before you activate and you get a lot of leeway in making hardware changes since it casts three votes out of ten required for one to get out of reactivation.

Insofar as Windows 7 is concerned there is little information on the net about the algorithm used except that it is much more tolerant to hardware changes. Still it would be reasonable to take that the basic algorithm is maintained with some more changes thrown in to cater for the present hardware scenario.

So I would still suggest that one does not disable any NICs integrated into the motherboard or installed onto it before activation and perhaps thereafter too. - well I really do not know the pros and cons of it.