The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Annoying Windows Activation

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by kthung, Nov 15, 2008.

  1. kthung

    kthung Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    58
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Hi,

    I have Windows Vista Business installed on a boot camp partition on my MBP (the latest non-unibody MBP). Every so often I a little pop-up comes up saying there was some hardware change detected and Windows needs to be reactivated. I have no problems activating windows but its just annoying.

    I'm not sure what the problem is, but here's what I'm thinking:
    I suspect the problem is that sometimes I boot up using vmware fusion for light use and when I want to game I'll actually restart and use boot camp. Since vmware fusion can't use the video card, I'm guessing it just doesn't detect it at all. When switching back between boot camp and vmware fusion, it sometimes sees a video card and sometimes doesn't, which causes it to detect a hardware change.

    Is anyone in the same boat that can verify this and/or help me find a way to avoid having to keep reactivating windows?
     
  2. count_schemula

    count_schemula Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    331
    Messages:
    1,445
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Use search, but I have not found a solution to this.

    If you only use vmWare or only use BootCamp it's not an issue. If you switch between the two environments... it's an issue.

    Since I have a PC for games, I gave up and deleted my BootCamp partition and only run Vista out of vmWare now.
     
  3. talin

    talin Notebook Prophet

    Reputations:
    4,694
    Messages:
    5,343
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    205
    Quite honestly, if it's not too much of a hassle, I would just reinstall windows every 30 days and avoid having to activate at all. Besides with vista, you can "rearm" the activation clock up to 3 times, effectively giving you an extra 90 days before having to reinstall. It's a built-in functionality microsoft put in vista.