This little bit of nonsense from Mac-centric freelance writer Ian Betteridge plopped into my RSS reader this morning: Activation becomes more annoying.
My eWeek colleague Mary Jo Foley takes a look at Microsoft’s decision to change Windows activation so that you will have no longer be able to activate via the Internet if you’re using a PC from one of the major vendors. While I can understand Microsoft’s reasons for this, it makes activation just slightly more irritating…
Which is followed by the familiar “get a Mac” coda.
Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Oh, but wait. What Mr. Betteridge doesn’t know, because he isn’t really a Windows specialist, is that if you buy a new computer from one of these “major vendors,” you don’t have to activate it. The system manufacturer activates your copy of Windows when the computer is built. You can reinstall the operating system on that computer using the original Windows XP CD as many times as you want, with no activation required. You would need to call for activation only if one of the following circumstances were true:
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You were trying to use the original installation CD on a different computer than the one it was purchased with. (That would be a violation of the license agreement, and that is the whole point of this change.)
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You upgraded the system BIOS with a flash that didn’t include the System Locked Pre-installation information.
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You replaced the motherboard with one from a different manufacturer that did not include the same BIOS.
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You substantially changed the computer by replacing multiple components simultaneously. (A couple minor upgrades won’t do it; assuming the motherboard is from the same manufacturer, you would need to replace practically every other internal component to trigger this so-called out-of-tolerance condition.)
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Your system has been infected by a virus that replaced the contents of the BIOS. (I can’t remember the last time I heard of one of these appearing outside of a virus-testing lab, and if you get a BIOS-level virus you have much bigger problems than activation.)
If one of these conditions is true, you will need to call a toll-free number to activate your installation. I’ve done this a few times and can report that the process typically takes less than 10 minutes. But most people who buy a computer from Dell or Gateway or HP or another of the world’s top 20 PC makers will never encounter the need to activate.
Back in 2001, when Windows XP was still in beta, I remember reading predictions that Windows Product Activation would be such an incovenience that it would result in catastrophic failure for the new OS. That didn’t happen. In fact, can you even remember the last time you thought about product activation? For most people, most of the time, it’s simply a non-issue. And that’s what this change will mean: nothing.
Update: Dell’s Web site offers a very clear explanation of the differences in activation between a retail copy (which requires Windows Product Activation) and an OEM copy that uses the System Locked Preinstallation technology. Although the specifics of this explanation apply to PowerEdge servers running Windows Server 2003, the exact same technology is used for Windows XP installations. I’ve highlighted the relevant section:
The Windows Server 2003 OS must be activated after installation. An OS installed manually using a Microsoft retail CD is activated through Windows Product Activation (WPA), which requires each installation of the OS to be activated either online or by phone through a Microsoft License Server clearinghouse.
The Windows Server 2003 CD that ships with PowerEdge servers has a built-in anti-piracy technology known as System Locked Preinstallation (SLP). The SLP feature enables administrators to bind the OS to a system’s specific hardware so that activating Windows Server 2003 is not necessary. When an SLP-enabled CD is used to install the OS, administrators need not type in a unique product key.
Because SLP-enabled CDs are designed only for clean installations of Windows Server 2003, administrators installing the OS using the CD should also boot from it. SLP is not supported while running setup.exe or winnt32.exe, because these executable files run from within an existing Windows environment.An SLP implementation is transparent to the end user, without any noticeable difference from a manual installation using retail media. However, the SLP process works only on supported PowerEdge servers that ship with Windows Server 2003. In addition, any tampering with the SLP-enabled CD automatically invokes WPA. The SLP-enabled CD is available only for 32-bit versions of Windows Server 2003, not 64-bit versions.
This technology is available to all OEMs and is very widely used.
Update: I have posted a very detailed follow-up on the changes in Windows Product Activation and what it means for you.
I am also getting frequent activation requests, I have also had a couple of BSOD reboots (I’ve now stopped the reboot so I can read the error)and also I’ve lost the use of a USB hub altho’ the computer says its ok. I was already suspecting a motherboard error and this thread confirms my suspicions. How do I check the mothers battery ? Thanks
Take it out and put a new one in!
By the way ED! I never did get a reply from you after i sent the email with Microsofts answer…. “It appears that SP2 has corrupted the bios” . Pretty much the same as Microsoft…Deathly silence, apart from a phonecall apologizing for breaking my computer and thanks for using Microsofts products!
That’s not true, Peter.
Far from “deathly silence,” my archives show that we exchanged a series of e-mails on the topic. Here was my next-to-last e-mail to you, sent last November 7:
Sorry you had what sounds like a serious problem. I still don’t see anything that suggests SP2 destroyed your computer, despite what you think a support person told you.
as long as you keep an open mind that’s fair enough.
It was mighty strange though!
I have had two friends with XP problems recently. The first got some sort of virus that rewrote a bit of the BIOS (thereby wiping out the SLP “tattoo”, as HP calls it), and made windows not boot. The recovery disk wouldn’t work because the SLP id was gone. She paid $80 to BestBuy or someone to reflash the BIOS with the SLP key. Then the HP rep walked her through using the recovery disk. He forgot to mention to her that all her data would be erased, so she lost everything.
Second friend had some sort of virus/spyware that generally slowed things down, and caused the version information to disappear from IE, though it seemed like it was working okay. Some OS dialogs had buttons that were unclickable. I reinstalled IE. but that killed the OS due to DLL conflicts or something. The recovery disks shipped with the system didn’t match the SLP id. Compaq sent me new cds (for $24) and then were for the wrong computer. They sent me different cds, and those ones worked.
No activation issues per se, but even the Direct OEM SLP solution is a big enough pain for me.
I’m not sure that this discussion is still active, but I thought I’d ask about this here anyway.
I have a two-year-old Packard Bell computer in 2004 which came with XP installed and a COA sticker. It has a hidden recovery partition which will replace the contents of the main hard drive with the original image. I’m pretty sure that this is an SLP-locked version of XP (the Magical Jellybean program reports a product key different from my COA sticker).
What I want to do is to reformat my main partition (actually, repartition the drive so that it’s organized in a way I’ll find more useful). However, I don’t want to restore the Packard Bell image, since that includes a bunch of programs that I just don’t want or need (such as Norton Internet Security 2003!!).
Now, there is a hidden folder C:\Windows\i386 which, as we know, contains all of the files necessary to reinstall Windows. I have seen websites that have a method of burning this to create an installation CD (I also want to slipstream SP2 into it so that I don’t need to do that upgrade later, but if this creates problems I’ll leave that out).
The question is, if I use this copy to reinstall XP, will the SLP lock be maintained? It will be going onto the exact same system as before (I have changed a few things, but not the motherboard or the BIOS). Are there files that, if I save them now and replace them, will keep the lock (such as wpa.dbl)? Should I use the product key from my sticker, or the one that Magical Jellybean reports?
In any case, I’ll be keeping a copy of that Packard Bell restore image safe – if I can’t get a clean install to be activated properly I will just use the image again, and put up with the outdated junk software.
Thanks very much to Ed and anybody else who can offer an answer.
SP2 can and will destroy hardware because it destroyed my graphics card. Called windows all it did is bs me.
Neeraj Mathur,
The SLP info is hardcoded in the bios, but you need to make sure you use the OEM files and SLP key for it to work.
(1). Backup the slp key that magic jellybean shows and not the one on the sticker.
(2). Choose to show hidden folders and files, create a new folder in the root of drive C and name the folder “OEM” without the quotes and copy these list of files bellow inside the new folder.
Files needed from your Windows “system32″ ;
OEMBIOS.BIN
OEMBIOS.DAT
OEMBIOS.SIG
..and file needed here:
C:\Windows\System32\Catroot\{F750E6C3-38EE-11D1-85E5-00C04FC295EE}
OEMBIOS.CAT
(3) Now, open a command prompt and “CD” your way to the OEM folder and type in these commands one at a time:
MAKECAB OEMBIOS.BIN
MAKECAB OEMBIOS.DAT
MAKECAB OEMBIOS.SIG
MAKECAB OEMBIOS.CAT
This will compress the files to the Windows XP setup format.
Now, copy those four compressed files inside that I386 folder you found on the drive overwriting the old ones to make sure we have the correct OEM files inside the setup.
(4) Look inside the I386 folder for a file called WINNT.SIF ..open it with notepad and see if it has a key that is the same that magic jellybean showed. If so, this step is done.
If there wasnt an WINNT.SIF file there, create a new text file and copy the text below inside of it, save changes, and rename the text file to WINNT.SIF and copy it inside the I386 folder.
Note: Just copy whats between these lines below and not the lines themselves. Replace the “XXXXX: with your slp key jelllybean shows.
————————————————
;SetupMgrTag
[Data]
AutomaticUpdates=1
AutoPartition=0
MsDosInitiated=”0″
UnattendedInstall=”Yes”
[Unattended]
UnattendMode=FullUnattended
OemSkipEula=Yes
OemPreinstall=Yes
UnattendSwitch=”Yes”
Repartition=No
Hibernation=No
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
AutoActivate=Yes
TargetPath=\WINDOWS
[UserData]
ProductKey=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
————————————————-
(5) Now, you will need to slipstream SP2 as this will also create the root cd files needed like:
Home:
WIN51
WIN51IC
Pro:
WIN51
WIN51IP
(6) Burn the cd using a boot image file to make the cd bootable and you should be good to go with an updated SLP restore cd.
Wow! I have been searching the net for the right information on how to slipstream a OEM Recovery Disk from Alienware for XP Pro and this is the closest I have come to some great information.
My problem is figuring out to combine all my VIA drivers as well as the WinXP PromiseFastTrack SATA 378 ™ IDE Controller, AMD Athlon64 Processor, Marvell Yukon, etc.
I have been ripping my hair out for the last two years with this manufacturer. The last two Recovery disks they sent me will not copy the files when you reboot in order to reinstall windows. None of the three images they gave me was any good. Two of these images had no Promise Driver at all.
I can explore the disk and copy the files needed for a slipstream.
This computer has been shipped 12 times due to the constant mistakes time after time. They have had this computer more than I have had it.
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Brenda