theMediaman.com

Last week I performed my annual “Windows Clean Install”. Something I needed after a particularly crappy day at work (”Why hasn’t this been done yet?” repeated over and over after three weeks of working my ass off). So on my way home I grabbed the beer, then drank and installed an OS from scratch. What a geek.

I had my first run-in with Microsoft Product Activation… aka, “yet another dep’t outsourced to India”. I’ve done a number of system upgrades to my comptuer since buying it back in 2001, including a RAM upgrade just hours before the clean install. However, that wasn’t the reason I needed to do the Activation “the old-school way”. It seems that there’s a maximum number of times you can Activate a perfectly legal copy of XP Home, installed legally, on only one legal PC.

(Note that I’m capitalizing “Activate” and “Activation”, because MS is probably just around the corner from copyrighting another generic word like “Word” or “Windows“).

I’ve had a difficult time finding any documentation on this element of MSPA. One page that I’ve found states (only in a sidebar) how you have a maximum of 8 to 11 installs before the key will no longer work through Internet Activation.

Seems less to me.

My last installation was just over one year ago. Before that, it was over one year, and I know that I did one clean install in under one year. That makes this the fourth time it’s been installed.

Another kick in the pants was how I had to recite a 50-digit number to them over the phone (verbally, not using the keypad), then wait for someone to talk to, then repeat the first 6 numbers again, get the fifth degree, then type in a set of 36 numbers that they recited to me.

While on the phone to MSPA, the guy asked the usual “are you a criminal” questions, like “For how many computers are you using this licence”, which is a trick question. An answer of anything other than “one” will immediately black list you, your parents, your dog and your neighbourhood will be carpet bombed.

The other question I expected - but was still upset with being asked - was “why have you installed this copy of XP Home multiple times?”

I do it regularly so that I can clean out all the crap and software configurations that are slowing down my computer, jackass (actual answer excluded the “jackass”).

The whole experience would have been more entertaining had I remembered to use my Northern Ontario Accent there, eh? Unfortunately I was already well into the conversation before I thought of it.

Again, I encourage everyone who has to call technical support to use a fake accent. Even if it’s poor, they can’t tell. It’s more entertaining for you, and they won’t treat you like some “Stupid American” which - face it - most Canadians sound like.

So now I have a clean install on my machine. I feel like going through the Hell of a re-install again (Service Pack 2 takes over two hours to install… which is longer than the original XP install + manual Product Activation) just so I can call up MSPA and get them to activate my XP again.

“Why have you installed this copy of XP Home multiple times?”

“As a sleeper-cell terrorist, I need to wipe my hard drive clean of incriminating data on a regular basis. But it’s still installed on the one and only CPU and hard drive it’s ever been installed on, so what’s my Product Activation Code(TM)?”