A few windows activation questions and any possilbe Microsoft charges?

johnsmi

Hi there,


I have windows 7 on my pc and have to reformat and reinstall windows every few years because the computer just slows down and a reformat and reinstall has everything back to normal. I install a lot of demo software so over time windows just gets cluttered and slow.

I have a computer that came new with a preinstalled copy of windows and also the windows 7 install disk with windows key.

I'm a bit worried that way down the line the key may not be recognised as genuine when activating and just wonder if,

1 Will Microsoft charge to give me a new key taking into consideration that my copy is a genuine copy of windows?

2 Taking into consideration that activation may be linked to hardware on my pc and that over the lifetime of the pc I may have to do several activations, is there a set number of activation attempts that Microsoft will only allow before a genuine key is flagged as possibility invalid?

I do have acronis backup as well which saves a lot of hassle but still wonder about the above.

Thank you.

John

ThemeOne

Microsoft licensing is a complicated subject but you probably don't need to worry too much.

If you have an OEM licence (and from what you've said you may or may not have) then that is tied to the specific machine on which it was first installed i.e. if you ever dispose of the machine the licence is not transferable to a new computer.

However, you should be able to reinstall Windows any number of times on the original machine providing the machine has not been "significantly altered". Usually installing, say, a new hard drive, doesn't count as a significant alternation, whereas starting from scratch with a completely new motherboard and simply re-using the case does.

Having said that, any alteration to the hardware could in theory trigger some kind of check by Microsoft. I've not experienced this myself, but rumour has it that these days they are generally pretty accommodating with personal customers, unless they have strong reason to believe your licence was never genuine in the first place. You may also find that phone activation will work when automatic activation doesn't.

If it's a retail licence, the main difference is the licence is transferable to another computer, provided it is uninstalled from the original computer first. Whether reinstalling a retail licence on a computer which has been "substantially altered" would count as installing on a new computer I honestly don't know.

Hope that helps a bit.

forgotmyname

As long as you dont change the hardware too much then it will activate fine.

I think it resets after 6 months anyway.