This is just a quick post to say how much Microsoft and their draconian OS licensing mechanism are pissing me off right now.
Last week my computer stopped booting. I didn’t get around to looking at it until a few days ago because I had visitors over from the UK. Not just that, it is Christmas, and the last thing you want to be doing on your Christmas break is to be fixing computers.
I spent an hour or two playing with bits and pieces to try and determine the error. The problem was that the third DIMM slot on my motherboard (which, incidentally, has been a bit of a nightmare since I bought it) is dodgey. I removed a 512MB RAM stick from the offending slot over to slot two and the machine started to come alive again. I was pretty happy about this, despite the reduction in RAM speed due to the configuration, since I didn’t need to buy anything to make it work again!
So I left the machine for a couple of days again as I was happy with what I achieved. But today, because the study was in a bit of a state due to the bits of computers, manuals, and various other things I’d strewn around the room while investigating, I thought I’d finalise everything and tidy up.
Since my computer case was open, I thought I’d do a bit of housekeeping. I wasn’t really happy with the way it was laid out inside so I thought I’d tidy that up a bit first. I removed my WLAN card because it was flaky at best in 64-bit, and I’d had enough of the lag spikes (time to go back to cabled LAN). I moved my video card to a different slot to create a bit more space between it and my HSF (which is awesome, and does a great job even if it is a behemoth!). I also adjusted the fans a bit, cleaned up a lot of the dust, and moved a few of the cables around to improve air-flow.
So with all that done, I fired up the machine.
.. and got nothing. Shit.
The investigation started again. I thought that I’d go right for the previous culprit and rip out the RAM stick that I’d moved to see if that would resolve the problem. Thankfully, it did. So right now I’m running on 1/2GB RAM, not ideal to say the least but the machine is booting which is a lot better than it not.
The machine booted, and up came windows. It was at this point that I remember it telling me that a few days back it wanted me to reactivate Windows because of a substantial change in hardware. Of course, I ignored this stupid box because at the time I hadn’t changed anything. I’d moved a RAM stick!
But today, it greeted me again. This time the message was different. In essense, my 3-day “window” of reactivation had expired, and I was being forced to reactivate it now. And I do mean now. Now as in right now before I was allowed to log on. Oh, but there’s a problem here you see, because prior to logging on, there’s no network connection. So when you try and activate Windows before logging on, it can’t activate over the Interweb because it can’t get to it. Of course, the activation fails. But does it let me log in? No. What does it do? I ties itself into an infinite loop of …
- Try to log in.
- Fail because it’s not activated.
- Try to activate.
- Fail to activate because it’s not logged in and hence can’t connect.
- Goto step 1.
Not happy. Not happy at all. Not only had I not changed any hardware in the system (all I’d done is move it around, and remove a WLAN card) to force the reactivation, I am now stuck with a machine that won’t let me log in. Nice eh?
Here’s a nice little side-note for the Linux fanboys 
(yes, you know who you are). For yonks, a slight modification in anything to do with the video hardware in my machine would result in my linux graphics setup shitting itself. I’d then have to spend a chunk of the day trying to get it to work again with my dual-screen setup. But not this time. I’d mucked around with everything inside the machine, and what happened when I booted Linux??
Wait for it… WAIT FOR IT!
Nothing. It booted as if nothing had changed. Video settings were the same. Dual-screen worked. I sat here a little stunned for a while and I was brought back from my daze by the little blinking icon in the system tray telling me that I had updates to download. The network had connected, and everything was sweet.
See that Microsoft? Right there. That is what should happen. Nothing more, nothing less. When I reboot after a hardware change, I expect you to continue as if nothing had happened. I expect the network to connect without me dicking with it. I expect a nice little “Hello OJ, you legend, how else can I make your life easy today?”
So hats off to you LinuxMint. You made my day! Now, if only you hadn’t borked my Firefox install Time to update you to the last version me thinks, and give you a bit of the love and attention that you deserve.
As a final note, it looks like I’m going to have to buy some new RAM, and while I’m there I’m going to ditch this UK keyboard as it has been driving me nuts for the last year and half. Time to get back to the Aussie (some might say US) layout.
December 27, 2007
I forgot to mention that booting in safe-mode with network-support doesn’t make any difference. You’re still presented with the same user-friendly infinite loop.
December 28, 2007
I’m trying very hard to put my linux fanboy-ism to the side on this. But i have got to say that this is a horrible PR story for MS. And one can only hope that enough of those PHB’s in Redmond will read something like this and rethink their next OS. But I’m really not holding my breath.
December 28, 2007
The good news is that I managed to get it sorted out. So I’m able to boot my Windows installation again. That bad thing is that I have no idea why!
I had to try another 4 times (on separate occasions) before it worked. The Internet connection was always working, yet it repeatedly failed. The only thing I can think of is that the activation server was down, and hence I couldn’t connect.
That’s beside the point though, the fact that my experience leading up to that was so appalling is still a bad PR story for MS. If the activation server is down or inaccessible then Windows should boot. Activation should be attempted later, but the user experience shouldn’t stop. What narks me the most about this is that I’m still using the same hardware that I’ve used for the last couple of years. I shouldn’t have had to reactivate in the first place.
I don’t think MS are going to be giving the activation the flick any time soon. I know that they believe that piracy has dropped substantially since their WGA program was put in place. I don’t think they’ll care too much about stories like this, as they’ll consider me to be in the minority.
On the flip side, I reinstalled LinuxMint from scratch in 16 minutes, and updated with the latest patches (at the click of a button) in another 15). It was a most enjoyable install, as I didn’t really have to do anything!
December 31, 2007
Heh, if Windows booted when the activation server was down it’d be the work of minutes to work around the whole activation issue. You could just set up a DNS that redirects any connections to “activate.windows.com” (or whatever) to 0.0.0.0
To Windows it would then seem the server was always down, and you’d be able to use Windows forever without activating it.
January 3, 2008
I’ve heard horror stories of Windows deciding to deacticate itself just because a driver was updated. Windows seems to use what the driver tells it as an ID for activation rather than the actual hardware IDs.
What I don’t understand is why anything short of a CPU or motherboard change would ever make Windows think it’s on a different PC (and hence maybe being pirated). I’m scared to do anything to the hardware of my new PC. I could in theory buy another 8800GTX and run SLI if I wanted better Crysis framerates, but I daren’t in case Vista decides it doesn’t like the hardware change.
January 3, 2008
I think the Mobo is really the only killer. People change CPUs all the time, RAM sticks are dicked with constantly. People move hardware around inside their machines all the time. The thing that doesn’t change too often is the mobo.
I’d like to think that Vista isn’t stupid enough to think that a hardware addition is justification for a reactivation! That would certainly suck. Be sure to let us know what happens when you upgrade
A friend of mine at work has been having issues with Vista activation. This was because the motherboard in his laptop was replaced after calling Toshiba for support because his NIC was fried (which is part of the mobo in his laptop). Vista not only won’t let him reactivate, it doesn’t let him reinstall! It appears that it finds an existing install and bluescreens the install process. How shit is that!?