Driver Updates Can Cause Vista to Deactivate

File under This sucks, Beavis:

WARNING: device driver updates causing Vista to deactivate

After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA -- something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.

Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour.

You'll then need to reapply to Microsoft to get a new activation code.

How can this crazy situation occur? Read on for the sorry tale.

The Problem

Just over a month ago I swapped over the graphics card on my Vista Ultimate box. There were some new DirectX 10-based titles out and I couldn’t get the benefit on my old DirectX 9 card. The swap-over went well and I went on my merry gaming way.

Then a few days ago I got a Windows Activation prompt – I had three days to activate Windows or I’d be bumped back to RFM (Reduced Functionality Mode). What the? My copy of Vista was activated, and a graphics card change shouldn’t have triggered deactivation... surely!

I was able to reactivate easily enough, although as the product key was already in use (by me!) I couldn’t reactivate automatically, but had to speak to a Microsoft customer service representative.

I got the code easily enough, but it didn’t explain why Vista had deactivated, so I got in touch with Microsoft about the problem.

They sent me some special utilities to run which gathered the history of hardware changes on that machine since activation, and it turns out that my disk controller had changed, so the graphics card change was the final change which tripped deactivation.

The only problem? I had never changed my disk controller at any point. Apparently because I had upgraded the Intel Matrix Storage Manager application, this was reported as a major hardware change event.

On their own, neither event was enough to trigger deactivation, but cumulatively they were.

The Activation Process

The documentation is still being updated by Microsoft, but the activation process for Windows Vista and Volume Activation 2.0 is essentially unchanged from Windows XP, except that with Vista it’s supposed to be more tolerant.

When the machine is first activated, Windows establishes a baseline based on the installed hardware, but interestingly the information is not gathered from hardware IDs (which are not necessarily unique), but from hardware information as reported by device drivers. Any changes away from this baseline are weighted depending on the change (for example, a new CPU counts much higher than new RAM) and once the baseline threshold is passed, Windows deactivates and a new activation request is generated.

The problem with using device drivers as the basis for activation information is that a change in the driver model which has the result of changing the way that the hardware information is reported back to Windows can be enough to register as a physical hardware change.

For example, if you install and activate Vista using some Microsoft drivers downloaded from Windows Update (which is a very common practice) but then discover that a manufacturer driver gives better functionality (as is often the case for audio, video, storage and network drivers) you are running the risk that the drivers use different reporting models and will register as a physical change.

So what this essentially means is that keeping your drivers up-to-date is a potentially very risky process, with all changes monitored and changes weighted cumulatively.

The Problem with Activation

As most tech enthusiasts would be aware, activation (and particularly Volume Activation 2.0 which is applied to every version of Vista available), is designed for one thing – to curb piracy.

The idea is that Windows monitors the hardware it’s installed on, and if you create an image of an activated machine and drop it onto another system, it will re-register the hardware serial number changes (via the drivers) and realise that it’s been installed on a different system.

Of course, Microsoft needs to be able to protect its software. Piracy of Microsoft products is rampant and while many people find that amusing, no-one denies the company’s right to do something about it. However, it hasn’t worked. At least, it would have worked for Vista had not Microsoft bowed to pressure from OEMs to allow an activation loophole, which was quickly exploited.

Volume Activation 2.0 has not yet been cracked, but now it doesn’t need to be. There’s an official workaround for OEMs and the result is that anyone with a few minutes to spare can download a fully-functional pirated copy of Vista Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit versions) which needs neither product key nor activation.

So pirates haven’t been slowed down at all, and the rest of us -- the legitimate purchasers -- are left to live with Windows Activation. You really need to ask the question – who’s benefiting here? Certainly not users, and given the amount of discontent this is likely to cause, arguably not Microsoft either.

In its attempts to combat piracy, Microsoft has created a system which doesn’t focus on the problem correctly. After all, how do you define piracy? At its most basic level, piracy occurs when you install software on a machine when you aren’t licensed to do so. But the Windows Activation model isn’t designed to address this particular problem – as far as Windows Activation is concerned, there’s no difference between someone who tries to image two machines with the same activated version of Windows, and a legitimate user who wants to upgrade their system.

If you buy a retail version of Vista, as long as you’re not breaking the terms of the license, then surely it’s none of Microsoft's business what you do with that software. Legitimate users shouldn’t be monitored and inconvenienced to this extent.

The Solution?

There’s no denying that Windows Activation has a serious image problem. Not only is it inconvenient and cumbersome, but it creates a very strong impression in the user's mind that Microsoft doesn't really want to give you the software you paid for.

There are things going on under the hood which have nothing to do with you and which you’re not privy to, and, as I found out, it will affect you if you make an innocent wrong move such as updating too many device drivers.

Additionally, it has been completely bypassed by pirates, so the one group it’s aimed at is sailing blissfully past in a wonderful world where activation doesn’t exist.

At the very least, Microsoft needs to empower users in relation to activation, by involving them a bit more. Perhaps users could have a way of monitoring their cumulative changes, or maybe there could be some method where you could be informed when installing a device driver that it is contributing to your activation totals.

Ultimately, what annoys users more than anything is having something forced on them, and Windows Activation is absolutely one of those areas which causes a great deal of frustration and outrage.

APC has passed all this feedback back to Microsoft, which, to its credit, is taking the situation very seriously and has Vista developers working on a solution.

Apparently there are changes underway to make the whole experience more user-friendly. We certainly hope so. It’s absolutely in Microsoft’s interest to make those changes as widely known as possible. We’ll post information about that once it’s available.

3 words.

Defective By Design.

B-b-but, but, it's soooo purty, and shiny...

Oh, come on, you Windows bashers! What normal users would ever take the trouble to update their drivers? :rolleyes:

That's really kinda shabby, though apparently you can still activate it, just have to call home, which is of course a bit annoying.

Unless you're a hardcore gamer, you can safely hug Gates without looking gay. :rolleyes:

I feel as though I should hand out a minor warning for that last post, but I can't figure out what it means. Thus edzy is innocent by reason of incomprehensibility.

No more hardware updates. Got it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Thus edzy is innocent by reason of incomprehensibility.

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Welcome to The Frontroom. :sunny:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CrossLOPER

No more hardware or software changes to your computer, ever again. Got it.

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Fixed that one for ya mate.

:balloon2:

It's so ironic that the only people not affected by this error are those it is designed to combat: pirates :wall:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lemur

I feel as though I should hand out a minor warning for that last post, but I can't figure out what it means. Thus edzy is innocent by reason of incomprehensibility.

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Well, since gamers play a lot, and some of us have Vista, we are forced to update our drivers a lot. But if you aren't a gamer, it's not necessarily needed to update drivers, so then you can hug Gates for making Vista a good OS.

Got it? ~D

I usually consider myself half a gamer and I can live very well without updating to every new driver version. On top of that, people who can read will notice two things:

1. only updating to another driver model can cause reactivation, so upgrading from one NVidia driver to a newer version shouldn't do a thing, unless you uninstall, restart with the standard windows driver, install a new one and then restart again and this would count as two new graphicscards, but then I have done that already and nothing happened.

2. you can upgrade your hardware, you can even buy a complete new PC, they just want you to call them afterwards and say "Hi, I bought a new PC, now give me a ******* new key", if you leave out the stars, you will most likely succeeed and can happily go on living. It's annoying, I'm not denying that, but it isn't exactly new either, Earth 2160 has an even worse mechanism that was triggered when I just played around with different RAM configurations. And their hotline costs money. :wall:

Yes, it's annoying, but they don't lock you out completely as some here seem to assume.

After you enraged me so much I will need lots of hugs from Billy. ~:pat:

It might be just me, but I've been getting this feeling that Microsoft has forgotten what the PC is all about. Maybe it's just the dumbing down of the average user (since everyone has a PC these days), or maybe it's the XBox/console mentality, but they don't seem to think people open their boxes anymore or have any idea what goes on inside a PC.

A more tinfoil-hatted person might suggest that they don't want you to open you box ever, just plug it in when the Dell package arrives at your door and never touch it again. I'm sure this would make media companies and such happy, but I believe it would signal the end of the PC and Microsoft's main business income. Are they just going to clone Macs? Drive gamers to consoles? If this is their goal, I fail to see the lure of a M$ desktop PC. Games are the only thing keeping me on Microsoft systems, and even those are being dumbed down (or consoled up) so much that I wonder why I even bother. More and more functions (especially the ones most desired by the mass-market) of the PC are available on other devices now, and every time M$ tries to clone those devices they get spanked. They did one thing - software for PCs - well (sorta), and they seem to be actively killing that market.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Fixed that one for ya mate.

:balloon2:

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I still work primarily off of XP and I plan to do so for as long as I have been using 98.:beam:

The problem is, once you switch from XP to Vista, you don't want to switch back. Vista is good, though a bit unstable, but you don't want to switch from the funky graphics back to XP.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

The problem is, once you switch from XP to Vista, you don't want to switch back. Vista is good, though a bit unstable, but you don't want to switch from the funky graphics back to XP.

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That is very true except the unstable part. Maybe the games are somewhat unstable but that's a problem with the games, I can play Mount&Blade for hours and it won't crash, same for Medieval 2 while some other games like to crash a bit more, then again some games also did that in XP due to the games being badly programmed, not the OS. And XP was more likely(more, not very likely overall) to crash together with the game, Vista has always kept running fine so far.

But yeah, once you have the nice new stuff, XP feels old and upgrade packs to update the XP interface are pretty bad from what I've seen. All a matter of preference I'd say. There were people who hated XP like the plague at the start but even before SP1 it was way superior to 98/ME which kept crashing IMO. :shrug:

The thing is, Vista is pretty stable for me, but sometimes Internet Explorer blocks when I have like 8-9 tabs open. Crashes don't quite occur during games, and M2TW runs without a single hitch.

So, Vista is good. Waiting for the serious updates.