“After weeks of grueling 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.”Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Microsoft to push functional programming into the mainstream with F# @ Ars Technica
- Is Blocking Ads Ethical? An End User Perspective @ PCMech
- Driver Heaven Interview With Thomas Glen: Uberclok PC
- SanDisk Sansa TakeTV Video Player @ CoolTechZone
- AMD Q3 Commentary @ PenStar Systems
- Eight Crazy Weeks of Giveaways – Week TWO of EIGHT – Sponsored by ANTEC @ Futurelooks
- AMD, We Need Thee! @ HardwareLogic
- The Computer Repair Utility Kit @ Technibble
- How-to: Change your boot and logon screen in Windows XP @ PCMech
- Planon DocuPen RC800 Color Handheld Scanner (DPEN-RC800) @ DragonSteelMods
When is a driver update not just an update?
When Vista pegs it as completely new hardware. Slashdot has a link to a story on how Vista’s activation scheme can suddenly deactivate your PC and give you a nasty surprise. We are all aware that enough changes to your hardware will deactivate your Windows install, and that you will have to call Microsoft to get it reinitialized, but in this case an update to the Intel Matrix Storage Manager was registered as a hardware change. On the good side, Microsoft did help him track down the cause of his problem.
