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WinXP Product Activation
With Microsoft's new product activation in WinXP it has caused confusion
as to what happens if one upgrades their hardware. Since the WinXP
software activation takes a snapshot of the hardware installed in your
system what happens should you upgrade specific components in your system?
Product activation determines tolerance through a voting
mechanism. There are 10 hardware characteristics used in creating the
hardware hash. Each characteristic is worth one vote, except the network
card which is worth three votes. There must be 7 or more matching points
for the two hardware hashes to be considered in tolerance. If the network
card is not the same, then a total of 7 characteristics other than the
network card must be the same. If the device is a dockable laptop,
additional tolerance is allotted and there need be only 4 or more
matching points. The changes are cumulative; however, if a user is
asked to reactivate, the hardware profile is reset to that new configuration.
The 10 hardware characteristics used to determine the hardware hash are: