How does changing the hardware affect your Windows activation status

In our previous article we looked at how Windows sends a hardware profile along with the key to Microsoft during the activation process.

Let’s take a closer look at how this hardware profile is sent as an ID created by the Operating System.

Firstly this hardware ID is created every time the system is started, this is used to check the new hardware ID with the old one stored by Microsoft on your system. This confirms if the machine is the same one on which you activated your Windows key.

When you make changes to the hardware the ID obviously changes but if it a small change then your system maintains the activation status. Changing the hardware substantially, will deactivate the system and prompt you to reactivate it in order to keep using Windows.

While every hardware change results in changes to the hardware ID some of them like adding more RAM, changing the Optical drive [including the type of optical drives] will not significantly change the hardware ID unless you change a significant number of components at the same time. Due to the different weightage allotted for each component you could change more than six components at the same time as long as the NIC is not changed. The NIC has a high weightage and could result in deactivation of the machine either by itself or in combination with other changes.

Adding more hardware without removing the original components does not affect your activation status as the hardware ID would not have significant change.

Changing the Motherboard nowadays means that a lot of integrated components are also changed this results in an automatic deactivation of the system. In case of such a deactivation you should contact Microsoft helpline for support as discussed earlier.

Our next article will be on key management from the Command Prompt.