Microsoft Product Activiation loopholes

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07-03-2005
Liger86

Microsoft Product Activiation loopholes

I have put quite a bit of thought into this...

You know how when you install a fresh copy of any new product from Microsoft it asks you to activate it on the net or by phone, you give them your key or something like that and then Microsoft gives you a product activiation key...

Anyway, I have longtime ago found somewhere on Microsoft website something that said that you can activate your product about 100 times, and on the 100th time the activiation will fail.

Lets take Win XP Pro SP2 for example, I got an OEM version. Lets say I do the activiation through the phone. When I tell them my "key" they give me their "key". What if I wrote down this key that Microsoft gives me - would I be able to use it if I reformat the system?

I'm just curious, what if I'm an idiot and want to reformat my computer 10 times a week, I'll run out of keys from Microsoft right? I just want to make sure I'm on the same page with Microsoft and this is by far the best community for this thread!
07-03-2005
Jeremy G

They have a little more protection than that. In fact Im pretty sure the keys expire because a date is encoded in them. If you got the their key but didnt activate and held off for a month, i'd be willing to be it wouldnt work.
07-03-2005
Liger86

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeremy G

They have a little more protection than that. In fact Im pretty sure the keys expire because a date is encoded in them. If you got the their key but didnt activate and held off for a month, i'd be willing to be it wouldnt work.

Actually I don't think that the key that you get from Microsoft expires, I have read that YOUR product key expires after certain amount of times you try to activate it...

If someone knows some facts on this topic or knows a good reference place please tell, I've been all over Microsoft.com and only found what I was looking for one and forgot to bookmark it.
07-08-2005
civix

Well there's always keygens.. and it's been so long since i've posted on cprog, I dont remember the rules, so i'm just going to stop now. I'm just going to say that there is always a loophole. I found the trickiest one to be installing SP2 on a system with a bad PID. Tricky, but do-able.
07-08-2005
Shadow

I have a valid copy of XP Pro but I don't have my key right now so I keygen'ed one. SP2 wouldn't install until I changed the current one. I had to change keygens, then try installing SP2 until I found one that passed. With just installing XP, the first keygen I threw at it worked.

I have mine somewhere damn it..