I'm planning to make these hardware changes and I want to know if I'll have to request a new activation:
- DVD player/recorder > blu-ray player/DVD recorder
- 6 GB RAM > 12 GB RAM
The system is the W7 Pro (check sig).
Will I?
Last edited by Paultx; 18 Oct 2010 at 11:11.
No you won't have to reactivate it
In most cases of hardware change excluding the motherboard, CPU and HDD/SDD, there should be no need for re-activation. However, you should always be prepared to re-activate when carrying out any form of hardware upgrade.
Option Two Activate Windows 7 Online
If that doesn't work, then try Activate Windows 7 by Phone You may need to speak to an activation operator.
Thanks, guys. When I make the changes I'll let you know. I hope I won't have to activate again, it's so boring... Why don't they just register some stuff in the machine and in some database and make some special pairing to avoid all that? I know there are these privacy issues and all, but they could have some opt-in way...
They do. Online activation pairs your key with a hardware hash that is a composite of various hardware components on your machine. For MS, mobo is THE most important, so different weightages are assigned to different components, E.g. optical drive and ram have less weightage, hard drive has more and so on. When the sum total of all your changes exceeds a threshold value, your system becomes deactivated.
Its a pretty sound scheme, gives you flexibility to fiddle yet makes sure you dont actually use a single license on multiple machines.
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