Install 2 computers with same XP Home CD-key?
- Thread starter Guden Oden
- Start date
Not always true. I've done it on an Athlon 1.4Ghz and a Athlon XP 2500+. I don't know how they could both be activated, but I did it. Admittedly, I activated them a very long time apart from each other (about a year), so that could have contributed to it. Had to call for the 2500+, though.Diplo said:
carpediem said:jvd said:
Since you're "cheating" anyway, why not just use a corporate version that don't need activation?
they need to come out with a better pricing scheme for windows let me tell u.
THe current crap they are doing isn't going to fly. Everytime i upgrade a mobo i have to call them up. Wtf is that. Are they my mommy that needs to know if i washed my hands before supper ?
jvd said:
I agree that for home licenses the M$ scheme of tying one box to one copy of Windows is absurd--licenses should be sold to people, not computers. If I have one box at home, or five, a single license to me per OS version should suffice for all of them as I shouldn't be penalized for owning more than one box. The extra work and expense involved is mine, not M$'s, in that case.
The irony is that for business, where licenses should indeed be charged per machine or seat, that WinXP has *no* activation function built in. Heh...
(Which is why people cheat with the "corporate" version of the OS.)But to ameliorate all of that, from my experience with the OS since '01, it certainly seems like SP1 and SP2 have greatly liberalized M$'s call-in activation requirements. I forget what they are, exactly, but I believe that currently you can install up to six major hardware changes (cpu, motherboard, hard drives, etc.) before being told you have to make an activation call, and tempering that even further I believe there is a time limit of 120 days operating, too. That is, if you make seven major hardware changes within a 3-4 month period, then on the seventh you'll be asked to activate by phone; but if the seventh falls outside of the 120-day period then the counter is reset and your seventh change counts as the first change in the new period, and you still have six more changes remaining in the period in which automatic Internet activation works without the phone call.
Like you report I used to have to call them constantly over new hardware--or sometimes just changes in my configuration--when I first installed XP, but it's been a couple of years, I think, since I've last called them about a hardware change. I think they've made the policy a lot easier these days through service pack changes to activation. Some good advice for people installing a bunch of new stuff at the same time is to go ahead and install it all and decline any invitations to activate that the OS invokes until after everything is installed and setup like you want it--then do it all in a single activation.
Is it still piracy if your country explicitly allows you to keep a backup of anything - including operating systems, and states this in federal law, and further states this law takes precedent over any EULA or legal conditions prescribed by foreign powers?
Welcome to Australia - where even DVD zoning from the USA is heading towards a high court challenge! Gotta love the free trade act!
Welcome to Australia - where even DVD zoning from the USA is heading towards a high court challenge! Gotta love the free trade act!
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
g__day said:
No it isn't. Contracts (or anything else) can't supercede statute law. For instance, I can't sue you for breach of contract because you refuse to be sold into slavery as per the contract you signed. The country's law making slavery illegal can't be overridden by a "legally signed" contract that breaks the law.
It's the same principle with EULAs and everything else. Statute law takes precident.
Likewise the USA isn't going to be able to extradite you for something which is illegal in America, but is legal in Australia - the extradition would fail unless Australia has signed over it's ass to America in it's extradition treaty.
g__day said:
Yes, it's piracy.
You can make a backup of the install CD.
You can make a ghost backup of the installed system.
But I doubt your laws say you can do a backup of the entire system, and keep it in a directly runable format in a second computer. Ie, have a second installation.
You can install windows xp on multiple computers, as long as you do the installations like 3 or 4 months apart. You could also just call up microsoft and act innocent and see if they'll let you install it on a 2nd computer(as long as you say it is a reinstall after a hardware change or something). Besides that, pre-sp1 windows xp could be hacked to fake the registration, but pre-sp1 is buggy and windows update won't work if you do that. Ghosting might work too.
jvd said:carpediem said:jvd said:
Since you're "cheating" anyway, why not just use a corporate version that don't need activation?
they need to come out with a better pricing scheme for windows let me tell u.
THe current crap they are doing isn't going to fly. Everytime i upgrade a mobo i have to call them up. Wtf is that. Are they my mommy that needs to know if i washed my hands before supper ?
well you have to call up because you are stealing. If you didnt have the same key on other machines you could just do it on line... Yeah i wish Auto makers had free cars because noway im going to pay for 8 cars.... So ill just go steal some cars.