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Comment by jcnnghm | Hacker News Reader

Says the guy that doesn't have any family members that persistently fubar their systems, necessitating enough reinstalls to trip the activation limit.

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If your family members are destroying the OS, the best solution is to either run in a VM which is set to not persist changes (via VMWare or the free options), or to boot from a VHD file for your other members (keep a clean and activated copy that you can revert to).

There are many options to solve this issue (ex: the native VHD boot, VirtualPC, HyperV).

Telling Microsoft to remove activation is a knee-jerk reaction that helps no one.

You can even run Linux as the Host OS.

I write and sell software, and activation is absolutely critical and responsible for at least half my revenue.

That sounds like an heck of a lot of extra work just to deal with Microsoft's anti-piracy activation system. IMHO, your "answer" just reinforces the original author's point. Why should legitimate paying customers have to deal with all of these workaround and annoyances? Why should legitimate customers have to endure being treated like potential criminals? Especially when these activation systems aren't stopping the pirates!!!!!!!

He's not dealing with Microsoft's anti-piracy activation system as much as he's dealing with issues about family members.

And your point about MS not knowing what it's doing...

If the activation system was useless, and had no effect on revenue, it would be gone the next day.

I've been a legitimate customer since Windows 3.1, and I've only had to activate by phone 1 time. It was painless.

Having to re-install the OS because of virus issues, etc. is NOT usual and shouldn't be punished by forcing the user to go through some stupid activation system.

Having to re-activate because of hardware upgrades (new motherboard, etc) is also not unusual. Again, I don't see why a PAYING customer should be be punished by forcing the user to go through some stupid activation system, when pirates don't have to deal with the activation system.

Just because the activation system hasn't negatively affected you doesn't mean it hasn't negatively affected many, many paying customers. Why should I get treated like shit for being a paying customer, when I could get a better user experience by pirating Windows?

Just curious: What activation key is "100" digits long? I've never run into such a one from MS.

The really long activation keys I've run into are not from MS and are ones you can cut/paste (ie, not the ones used to install the OS fresh).

http://www.kodyaz.com/articles/how-to-activate-windows-7-by-...

Go down about half way. It's actually 54 digits, not 100. But the IVR isn't 100 percent accurate, and I have found I usually have to enter at least a few of the sets multiple times. And the voice system is one of those unskippable ones, so you can't just start entering numbers again right away after it detects a mis-enter. You have to listen to a 30 second message about re-entering the key first.

Why would you need to do this? No internet connection?

No, because the automated online system erroneously rejects the activation.

Never once had the same problem as you. Actually this is the first I hear of anyone using the offline activation methods. Yeah 54 digit codes suck. But 54 digits ain't 100 digits. And it would not justify, for me, going pirate. Unless you're sitting there installing stuff all day long every day.

Same here. I've installed Windows a bajillion times over the past 15ish years and never run into this kind of problem. I don't reinstall Windows, since (for me) apps cleanly uninstall post-Vista due to virtualizing filesystem and registry writes that used to gunk up /Windows and /Program Files in XP.

Same for me. I whined about crapware that came with PCs just as everyone else, but with Vista and Win7, I noticed can just uninstall these programs as soon as I fire up the machine for the first time and no harm done.

I hit the activation limit on my family pack (3 copies) and was never given any instructions on what to do. My system would go black and eventually become unusable. Instead of telling me how to reactivate the copies I bought, Microsoft puts up a message on how to purchase another new copy of Windows.

I'm done with this company now. I bought a Mac, and I'm not coming back.

FWIW, I hit the activation limit in WinXP, and the activation dialog had a phone number and some numbers I had to read to the person on the line. A few minutes later everything was fine.

(I'm a MS employee but I was doing this at home with my "I'm a customer" hat on)

The Windows 7 genuine advantage warnings are hostile, they accuse the user of stealing the software and as I remember the prompt was only to go ahead and pay for another new license of Windows 7.

In any case, it's not a problem for me anymore, as I now only run a pirated copy of Windows 7 in a virtual machine on my Macbook for testing on.

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