[alcidesfonseca]

Windows 7 (and 8?) had an activation procedure that would be blocked if the hardware changed since the last one (I can’t remember the exact hw they hashed). They have since went back on the restriction and windows 10 has more forgiving activation rules.

[asveikau]

I remember hitting that on Vista when I swapped out a motherboard that died, circa 2007. It asked me to call a phone number. So I did. I explained to the phone rep what I did to cause the error. They asked me where I got my copy of Windows. I told them. They unblocked me.

[encom]

How nice of them to grant you permission to run their software on your machine!

[xondono]

They still do, but they are more forgiving in some sense (they fingerprint more info, not just your motherboard so they can detect “small” changes).

I’m still regularly hit with “Activate your account” when I run my windows partition from parallels because the “hardware” has changed!

[pjmlp]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client...