On Sat, 8 Mar 2008 14:24:02 -0800, Chris@Swift
<ChrisSwift@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>Donald,
>
>I have made no changes to the hardware since building the PC last year when
>Vista was originally activated. With respect to updates, I've set Vista to
>automatically install so that may be the cause as you suggest.
>
>Chris

From what I know, Chris, this appears to be a known problem with
Microsoft Windows Product Activation itself. While Microsoft claims
that the latest updates to WPA have fixed it so that there will be
fewer such de-activations, they are still reported by enough other
users on a regular basis to be troubling to consumers.

Either a lot of people are trying to steal Vista, or something is
wrong with WPA. I prefer to believe that most folks are honest, and
Microsoft's software is at fault.

Anyway, hopefully sooner rather than later, WPA will be intelligent
enough to be able to tell the difference between a hacked copy of
Vista and a legitimate one, and be intelligent enough to make such
misidentifications a thing of the past.

Personally, I would prefer a form of hardwired licensing, such as a
few "bad" sectors on the installation media, over the software-based
licensing we have today. Or a combination of the two. But this WGA
we have today is simply unpalatable. It probably costs as much in
money and other resources for Microsoft to maintain the WPA system
that they would lose in sales if it was not used.


--
Donald L McDaniel

How can so many otherwise very intelligent people screw up
something so simple so badly? If you stick a computer
keyboard in front of most people, they'll suddenly drop
30 points off their IQs. Much like placing a "Pork Barrel"
bill in front of a politician: He'll forget all about
"cooperation" the minute he counts the zeroes before the
decimal point.