I know that it seems to suck, but you just got a bad tech. A popup on your
screen will tell you exactly how many days you have to activate or
reactivate. Believe what your computer tells you, not some person from a
third world country.

I change hardware much more than others also. I have had to reactivate about
4-5 times over the years because of this. My situation is NOT the norm.
Many, many people buy a computer and used it until it dies, without even
adding one additional program or piece of hardware. They don't know that
they can. They replace what may go bad by sending the computer back to the
manufacturer. What they usually get is an exact replacement part.

Also, their computer may have, in fact, been activated by the manufacturer
or need no activation because of the way the manufacturer installs the
operating system on their computers. The customer/user does not even know
that the process exists.

You and I are different. I have learned to live with it and I am certain
that you can also. At most, it is a phone call of about 5 minutes.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

"Mark Smith" wrote in message
...
"Richard Urban" wrote in message
news:eaMB1D6%

......you turned to ranting.
BTW, the time you took with only your first post would have been well
spent
by just reactivating your operating system. You have spent well over ten
times that amount of time now!


Thanks for the recap.

You are right that I am ranting now. I am frustrated, especially because I
know I have a new video card coming and a 1gig of ram coming. The MS tech
said when I install that I am going to have activate again.

You are wrong about the USB not needed in my original post. I have never
seen a pop up like that before, so it was relevant.

And I did reactivate. I had no choice. The tech said I had no choice, even
though there was a tab on the activation screen that said I could continue
later. I had asked if I could wait because I knew I had new hardware
coming.

I hope you noticed from all this that I have not complained about XP at
all. It is just the activation, and because I just learned from the tech
that I am going to have to get a new number every time I activate from now
on.

And before when all I had to do was click three times, I had no complaint
about the activation process.