Pain in the Butt Microsoft

It's a feature. Install Linux.

Oh well, if I hadn't someone else would have ;-)

Seconded. All those Windows/MS problems just disappear.

In message , Davey writes

And are replaced by all the Linux problems.

If I had a pound for all the time I've wasted trying to get an IPCam program or some audio hardware to work in Mint (or AVLinux or Red Hat), I'd be rich enough to buy a Mac. :-)

You can leave them as is and just re-activate Windows.

You should be able to reactivate them on new (to them) hardware.

(ISTR possibly a finite number of times ask MickeySoft support)

No it refuses to re-activate unless I pay Microtheif £107 per PC !!!!!!!

So I've got in early and reverted the PCs to their original configuration, which has circumvented the issue, but means I'm no further forward with the very intermittent fault that I was chasing :(

I appreciate they have to protect themselves from piracy, but this episode brings into question my entire back up strategy. I do back ups between two pc's in different buildings, (each has a large external usb drive). In the event of a total loss the idea was to use a spare identical configuration pc, boot using the System Recovery disk, then re-load from the back up. Obviously that won't work as it will be running in different hardware and Micropain will throw another wobbly.

Bill Gates would you like to come for tea and in depth conversations :)

Andrew

Well this happens often on hardware changes. I found that simply going to their validation site and following prompts fixed it again. Brian

Yes, I did this once following a motherboard failure, against my better judgement. Got through on the phone straight away, and all done in a minute or 2.

At which point you wouldn't have any problems at all, as it all just works.

This situation would happen in the event of replacement of a significant component(s) of a PC and is catered for by re-activation of the software:

And here too. I just installed the latest Linux Mint 17.1 as a dual boot on my old laptop, only to spend two days looking unsuccessfully for a reason that the notification area icons are invisible. It turns out, after a lot of research, that it is yet another Linux feature that is not backwards compatible (a SIS video problem, in this case). Add to that the fact that none of them will natively function with Broadcom B43 Wifi chips, and older several versions (13 for one - and it's a kernel problem, not Mint's) won't even load/install because of that, you have an O/S that is flaky in the extreme on older kit. Use on older kit was Linux's main use, in my humble opinion, thus rendering it well useless for most practical purposes. That's before you start on the software that doesn't exist under Linux, and the 3G dongles that have no Linux drivers.

On the same old laptop, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and now 10 ran first rattle out of the box and without modification or extra drivers. Microsoft aren't always wrong.

If you have OEM versions of Windows what you are doing seems to be specifically prohibited by the license. If you have retail versions of Windows it should be a simple re-activation, as others have said.

But doesn't this simply involve swapping the drives back, and reverting to the original network names ?

michael adams

...

The fault is your's not Microsoft's. You broke the terms of the licence.

He didn't break the terms of the licence at all. He was unfamiliar with a specific provision which allows him to re-activate Windows after a signifucant hardware change by making a phone call.

Which, given that the original problem resolved itself, could have been solved by having a back-up to hand. But then who wants to spend hours on end sitting there feeding a pile of floppies into the machine? Lets just hope that one day they make this a back up business a bit easier. Maybe with higher capacity floppy discs. We can but hope.

michael adams

Utter, complete, total, unmitigated nonsense.

Exactly how long is that stick that you've firmly grasped the wrong end of?

If the hardware manufacturers will not provide drivers, or documentation in order to allow drivers to be developed, in what way is it Linux' fault that that hardware will not work under Linux?

Only if you upgrade every few years as new features don't work on older hardware, even if the hardware is capable.

As for the OPs windows problem, it doesn't happen if you are running retail windows rather than the cheaper OEM version. He's lucky it wasn't an OEM bios locked version.

Right. Never had that problem. Are you sure your Win7 is pukka and you have the product key?