Before purchasing XP (I purchased it legitimately) I read a lot about it. One of the recurring negative themes of XP was authentication. How users would have to "authenticate" or "activate" with MS whenever they installed XP.
As we know, XP has it's 30 day warning telling you to activate the OS via internet or telephone. The consequences of failing to do so was shut down of the system or lock up. And for those of us who wanted to install their copy of XP on additional PC's or lend the OEM disk to friends, MS would shut down the original or first install system as a consequnce.
I have only authenticated twice since I bought XP, upon initial installation and when I bought a new motherboard. I never had a problem and never expected to.
But I have friends and I am also aware of others who have authenticated multiple times (wasn't there a limit of 6??) or have installed their copy of XP onto other systems and nothing has happened.
So was this all hype? Has MS not been able to enforce it's own "security" policies. I spoke to a MS tech support rep. who gauranteed me that any system with a illegal copy of XP would be shut down. What happened?
I have never heard of anyone having their system shut down because of an illegal copy of XP or by loading it onto multiple systems, have any of you?
Thanks
Engineer
As we know, XP has it's 30 day warning telling you to activate the OS via internet or telephone. The consequences of failing to do so was shut down of the system or lock up. And for those of us who wanted to install their copy of XP on additional PC's or lend the OEM disk to friends, MS would shut down the original or first install system as a consequnce.
I have only authenticated twice since I bought XP, upon initial installation and when I bought a new motherboard. I never had a problem and never expected to.
But I have friends and I am also aware of others who have authenticated multiple times (wasn't there a limit of 6??) or have installed their copy of XP onto other systems and nothing has happened.
So was this all hype? Has MS not been able to enforce it's own "security" policies. I spoke to a MS tech support rep. who gauranteed me that any system with a illegal copy of XP would be shut down. What happened?
I have never heard of anyone having their system shut down because of an illegal copy of XP or by loading it onto multiple systems, have any of you?
Thanks
Engineer