Vista deludes itself into thinking driver upgrades are major changes
A FEATURE in Microsoft Vista means that something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.
According to APC mag, minor upgrades to your desktop will result in your PC will going into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour.
You'll then need to reapply to Microsoft to get a new activation code.
Hack, James Bannan noticed the flaw when he swapped over the graphics card on his Vista Ultimate box. A few days later he got a Windows Activation prompt and had to speak to a Microsoft customer service representative before he got all his functionality back and the feeling in his toes.
Wondering why he got the shut down request, Bannon obtained some tools from Microsoft which listed all the hardware changes on that machine since activation. Vista thought his disk controller had changed, so the graphics card change was the final change which tripped deactivation.
But Bannan had not changed his disk controller, all he had done was upgraded the Intel Matrix Storage Manager application. Vista reported this driver upgrade as a major hardware change event.
It appears that Volish Vista designers had not worked out that if you change device drivers it does not necessarily mean you have changed your hardware. It could be, as in Bannan's case, you have updated or changed the drivers and not the hardware.
This is quite common as some of the drivers which ship with Vista are out of date or not as good as what you can find on the manufacturer's web site.
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This is another good example of how pirated software has 'added value' over the genuine article. I personaly know people who have perficlty legit Windows XP but use pirated software as it doesn't, ironicaly, constantly accuse them of piracy and shut down.. If Vista is more sensative to changes this willonly make this argument more compelling.. Personaly I'm seriously considering perminantly moving over to Ubuntu..
..that vista holds no great attraction for me.

Recently I had started to think that Vista on Laptops wasn't so bad, as the hardware is generally restricted to what came out of the factory, so they should escape the driver issue. All you can usually do with a laptop is upgrade the RAM, or maybe the harddrive if you're brave...

Now it looks like even a laptop could fall fowl of simple things like a bit of maintenance.

Remind me again, how long did Microshaft spend designing Vista? I keep forgetting!
Sounds as if MS wants Vista to be one of their ControlLed Virtual Machines rather than a customer Operating System. I wonder who thinks they have Control? And where is IT Ultimately Leading?
A few months ago I had Vista de-activate just by changing the disk mode in the BIOS setup. I had not changed any hardware at all.
This is old news. I'm talking 6 months old news. This happened ages ago with Vista and Microsoft not only knew about the problem but also released a patch as well.
What crap. 

This is obviously contrived by ill-experienced Vista haters.

I have my Vista install up to date. Just the other day I swapped 2 graphic cards, reset my BIOS a few times, re-instated my overclock, and reverted back to my original GFX card, changing drivers each time - guess what - Vista is still activated perfectly.

Why this site tries to downplay Vista at every available opportunity bemuses me, you've obviously not used it much.
Whats new about this? XP does exactly the same.
Hi,

just to say that i was overclocking my machine (running Vista 32) and it instantly locked me out and said "Pirated Windows Version" upon the reboot! I had to call Microsoft and wait ages on hold to get a re-activation key. I still have a photo of the screen message. Crazy!
One of our office test PC's did exactly the same thing, only it is running XP.
All I did was install a video driver, as it didn't have one before.
So this is not a new thing, but still incredibly annoying.
I had to re-activate Windows when I updated the drivers for my 8600GT. Weak.
I've had a few events like this over the life of using Windows XP but surprisingly Vista 64 bit has yet to hack up a hairball of this nature.

In fact, Vista has been problem free for me for lo these many months. It's getting better but I'm still not over the first six months of pulling my hair out. Since I love to play with bleeding edge stuff it's my own fault.
It happened to me when I upgraded my graphics card. Enraging for an OS that claims to be the next gaming OS. 
not that i believed it after beta testing.
but going back to XP never I love the Vista features....not for everyone..mine is stable...rock stable...drivers for other hardware not there yet.
Microsoft got so scared that nobody will buy their crap OS, that they even included Linux Virtualisation, it was covered into an article this morning. So why do we want their DRM infected sh...t? We are the buyers, ladies and gentlemans, WE decide the market! the consumer is the KING! Why do we let ourself fooled by scoundrels? WE can choose not to buy crap. Let them develop a better OS, not like Vista which looks like another Millenium Edition made in one hangover morning :) I love XP, I own a licence for XP SP2, I have lauded Microsoft for it, why release a lousier OS when XP works fine???

Where is XP Second Edition Gates lied about ? Where? Instead they gave us a 2003 Server rebadged as Vista with a new interface (Windows Blinds is even better for XP, Flip Windows works too, Sidebar too) and it works like handbrake on a Ferrari. And they said the OS took five years to develop and costed more than the trip to moon. Of course it costed, for every "big shot" at Microsoft who took vacation in Caraibe or Cote D'Azur :)) . Come on...
It is time for the shareholders to deactivate the current leadership at Microsoft for this 6 Billion dollar debacle.
This happened to me when I flashed an updated BIOS, though I'm not sure if it was that or forgetting to turn on the Intel Matrix Storage RAID mirroring and Vista saw 2 drives instead of the RAID controller. Had to reactivate Windows over the phone before I could fix RAID, so that meant I had to do it again once RAID was fixed! Now I'm afraid to make any changes to my own computer. Keep it up Microsoft, and the only people using your code will be pirates since honest paying customers won't put up with this forever.
Everything Microsoft does sucks badly, Xbox360, sucks badly, Vista sucks badly, Office 2007 sucks badly. WindowsMe sucks badly, Microsoft bob sucks badly. and so on..
"enough to put a man on the moon" if I recall ? That is what they said, didn't they ?

Well, Steve, looks like you should have either doubled the budget, or took some more time cleaning up the specifications.

An OS is supposed to be able to run programs, that's it. And it should manage the memory, the I/O systems and the graphics.

And that is all.

Oh well, you win some, you lose some, eh, Steve ? Why don't you just put this turkey into the bin where it belongs, and start designing a REAL OS for a change ?

One that does what _I_ want it to do ?
It's just an idea, but I might buy that, whereas I'd die of hunger rather than get a Vista CD anywhere near MY computers.
XP did this about three years ago when I removed a second (as in drive E:\) CD-ROM drive. 

Did it on another system about two years ago when I upgraded a video card. I had a retail version of XP Home on that system (and only that system), and when I called MS they told me if it happened again I'd have to buy another licence. Nice. 

Then it happened again on another system running an OEM version of XP that was overclocked in the BIOS during the install, and later when I returned it to the default speed in the BIOS, XP wanted to be reactivated.

It's nothing new. Since May so far the only time either of my two Vista Ultimate x64 OEM systems wanted to be reactivated is when I did a full rebuild of one of the systems (new motherboard, CPU, RAM). And surprisingly that call was quick and painless.
All I have to say to microsoft is that thief os'es seem to get worse a d worse over time. I am looking to run to the dark side with leopard coming. I look forward to the day where maybe when I build a new pc I can pick OS X or windows of some sort. 

Best Thing of all is a mac runs windows better than most pcs. And if it crashes, atleast on the other partition I have a great operating system!
i have to be 50-50

i have got versions of vista Home Premium (32bt) Business (32bt) and Ultimate (64bt)
i have supplied home prem to customers and had n problems what so ever apart from fact of vista needs to download updates from web as products only come with xp drivers at time 

however this has caused no problems to either myself or my clients. (end users)

i purchased ultimate 64 bit as i believe try before u sell and i have had problems with the drivers however this took nomore than a simple download to erradicate the files that were duplicated of computers the 64 bit now is runnin stable and othr than little hiccup i cant see any problems as yet i did have reason to call microsoft but due to their number being freephone no trouble there except time to go thro the automated service

as i say i test software before i sell so i know that if anyone is intereste in getting vista avoid the 64bt and there should be no probs with the 32bt
Why is a single occurence of this a news item? I've changed drivers and hardware a thousand times on Vista and never had anything happen like this.

I understand Vista isn't perfect, but it seems like some people just sit, poised, ready and waiting to jump on any opportunity to criticise it.
...old news, since WinXP does likewise. I'm surprised it's taken a supposed hack this long to catch on that this is How Things Work™.

If left on auto-activate during Windows Setup, Vista delays auto-activation for three days, giving you time to get your latest-&-greatest drivers before it takes its snapshot. If the auto-activate checkbox is unchecked, then the user gets up to 30 days to get that all sorted.
This happen to me too.

Fix it M$
When product activation came out with XP, that was when I decided I'd never install it on a desktop PC.

My desktop PCs run W2K and Kubuntu.
W2K has had motherboards swapped, CPUs changed and apart from some driver reinstalls it just keeps going year on year - and it's faster than Linux.

Funny that product activation is supposed to stop financial losses, but I'll only ever PAY for an OS that doesn't have it.

Yes - I'd even buy Vista if it was activation free, as at least I'd be able to fiddle around and change stuff and reinstall as often as I liked to get it working well.
2 weeks after I installed Vista Home Premium in February, I installed new sata drivers from windows download itself and after the system reboot, I was deactivated and had to wade through Microsoft's pool of mediocre, "everyone is a potential pirate", customer assistance reps to fix it. 

If there's a more piracy fear, paranoia filled company than Microsoft, it should be burned down before it kills us all.
I had to recomplie my linux and then edit my x.config from a crazy command line when i installed a driver.
happened to me too... i first installed vista (oem) without matrix storage driver installed, when i installed them it f***ed my activation, had to phone m$ to get it running again...
Then, i set up a raid0 array, but i made a system backup first using vista built in backup system, once the raid array made, i used the vista restore tool, and then again, it blew my activation (funnily enough, the two raided disks were the same than before, no hardware change so to speak).
I had to phone again (sigh), i had this verry funny question asked to me: "on how many hard drives is vista installed ?" omg, what a mistake i made answering "two harddrives, it's a raid0 array", then the girl said "you cannot install it on more than one hd" ... i finally said it was just one disk so she stopped bullying me and let me activate it again... made me regret paying for it, i felt stupid and... how may i say... "average"
I have no problems with Vista. I only had a minor issue on my laptop's soundcard driver but that has been resolved by using the default Windows drivers. 

If you have experienced deactivation you're just one of those unlucky users. Personally, I don't think its hardware or software-related and is caused by user intervention. I have upgraded nd downgraded device drivers quite a number of times already and I have had no problems with Vista whatsoever.
I recently had a Realtek NIC driver go South and cause my network connection to fail. I removed the broken driver and rebooted. XP Pro installed a Trendnet driver instead of a Realtek. After another reboot it said I had 3-days to reactivate. Nothing else has been changed on this PC in over a year. I removed the TrendNet driver and reinstalled the Realtek. Rebooted and reactivated and was able to do it over the Internet. This wasted over an hour of my time and made me late for an appointment. This is why I stick to Win2K on my main system. Linux and Mac OS look better every day to this MS abused PC user.
get a Mac
Just installing SP2 after activation made me have to reactivate, since I guess my system looks so different afterwards.

Vista is not as annoying with the bubbles about not being activated, at least.
Hmm... what's the formula for creating an Inquirer article? Ah yes! Bash Vista!
In response to the Comment "Total", I've had Vista deactivate itself twice, once after updating my Nvidia Grpahics drivers, and the second after vista "lost" my DVD drive (reboot brought it back and Vista deactivated itself). This is a laptop computer, the only thing I can change hardware-wise is RAM and HDD, neither of which have been changed. Vista has deactivated itself twice once for no reason, I now can't use vista until I spend ~20 minutes on the phone to MS *again*.