Graphics card change requires reactivation - why?

I tried adding a second older Nvidia graphics card into my desktop computer. (I was seeing if I could use it via PCI pass-through in a virtual machine.) My Windows 7 Home Premium OEM (on a custom built pc) didn't like that, disabled the original Nvidia graphics card, and tried to use the new card by default but the display was stuck on a low resolution. I removed the second graphics card but Windows 7 didn't automatically revert to using the first card on reboot, so I had to reinstall the Nvidia driver for it, after which everything was ok... except that Windows 7 said I had to reactivate it.

I have previously read that changing the gpu shouldn't affect the activation status, but in this case the activation seems to be dependent on the graphics card.

So my question is: Why is my Windows 7 installation so finicky about the graphics card?

Code:

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Name: Windows(R) 7, HomePremium edition
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Event Time Stamp: 5:8:2015 06:33
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Thanks for the quick response.

I use the built-in Windows 7 firewall with the default action set to 'block outward connections', but I disable it temporarily when I activate Windows. I'm not sure which files to create rules for to enable activation to get through the firewall (an internet search failed to produce any clear answers), and I figured I'd only be activating it once, so I left it like that.

I did the same to reactivate Windows 7 after the current incident. The first attempt did fail to connect until I remembered to disable the firewall, which is where that error would have come from, but after the firewall was disabled temporarily the activation proceeded without a problem.

I was just concerned that trying to add another graphics card caused the system to lose its activation status.

Are you saying the firewall blocking caused the activation status to be revoked after I played around with the graphics cards? Or is that a separate issue?

Just wanted to comment on the older card being used by default. In my BIOS (also Gigabyte but AMD) there is an option to chose either PCI or PCI-e as the preferred GPU.

It is called Init Display First inside Advanced BIOS Features, and default is set to PCI. You can check if you have such a feature as well.

Ah nevermind, just checked your BIOS manual, yours is UEFI BIOS and you do have the option but default is PCIe-x16.

However, I guess you are wrong in your assumption. Windows renders only with the display attached to the monitor so unless you changed the cable to old card, Windows will not use that card. My bet is that an old driver was installed and that tuned down the resolution. Normally, you can use an older card with a new one (I have both GTX970 and GTX480) in my case, but they use the same drivers. Your PCI card being too old may have a different driver and I don't know if it is possible to install both. (I do know that AMD and Nvidia in same case works if that matters.)

You should not have to disable the firewall to activate windows

I have the firewall set to block anything that doesn't have a rule set for it. Unless a file has a rule created for it, it will not pass through the firewall.

adding a 2nd card should not have affected activation

That's why I'm confused, because that is what happened.

If the virtual machine can`t see or use the 2nd card, there`s no sense even using it, run your VM and check Device Manager.

I'm running VirtualBox in Linux Mint (it's a dual-boot machine and I use Linux for all of the heavy work, while Windows is just for games) and the second card is available to use in Linux. Unfortunately, PCI pass-through turns out to require the card to not share IRQs with anything else, and my motherboard is hardwired to share IRQs for all of the available slots into which I could put the card, so PCI pass-through ends up not being possible anyway.

My bet is that an old driver was installed and that tuned down the resolution.

Yes, that seems to be what happened. The older card (Nvidia 9800GT) is not supported by the driver for the newer card (Nvidia GTX970). Windows seems to have detected the second card and automatically tried to install a generic driver for it, disabling the newer card in the process. As I mentioned above, the PCI pass-through attempt turned out to be futile, but I still don't understand why I needed to reactivate Windows 7. It's not really a problem, as the reactivation only took a few moments, I'm just curious to know why it was necessary.

It has to check at intervals of up to 90days, and flags non-genuine if it can't contact the server.

Seriously?!! Windows 7 has to re-validate every 90 days? I didn't know that - I assumed it would need to be activated once and that would be the end of it. It seems ridiculously intrusive, and obviously problematic for people who aren't online all the time.

I'd be happy to create a firewall exception rule for whatever files are involved in the activation process, but I still haven't been able to find out exactly which files I'd have to create firewall rules for.