Why my wife loves Windows XP Activation
8/11/2006
A few days ago I installed XP from scrach on a new machine. I always like to get rid of things that annoy me, and the XP activation dialog defintely annoys me. So I did something that I now understand is stupid. I activated my copy of XP.
Activation was just yet another pot hole in the road to building my super computer.
Why was my action stupid? After all if you do not activate Windows will stop working after 30 days. So it would seem prudent to activate, no? Well yes. Do activate unless you want to reinstall Windows every 30 days. But wait until all your drivers are installed. Right after I activated I then installed the video drivers. This simple change, in which no hardware actually changed caused Windows to decide to reactivate. Now mind you, I did not actually change any hardware. The video cards (Yes I have 2) were already installed and using the default Windows driver. All I did was install the ones from the CD that came with the video cards. And during reactivation, well thats is where the problems started.
Activation and the Tax Man cometh
Activation is up there with the tax man. I have no use for either one and have serious ideological differences with not only their functions, but more specifically their enforcement methods. In short their enforcement measures end up ensnaring large amounts of innocent people while still allowing many cheats to get away with whatever it is the tax man or activation believes they should not be doing. I wrote about this in length in my article a few years ago entitled Piracy and Unconventional Wisdom. This is a very good read and it has received a lot of peer review and feedback. I encourage you to read it or bookmark it for later reading.
Here lies the proof
I am travailing. This is a normal state of affair for me. So when the reactivation first hit I was a bit upset. Especially since it only gave me THREE days to reactivate, else it threatened to disable my system. Three days? Even a timeshare contract I have more time to consider.
So now I was stuck. I had to activate. I had heard that occasionally these things happen and according to the marketspeak on the Microsoft website, Activation was fast, easy, and convenient! So what was I to fear? For starters the activation wizard pops up right after you enter your password but before your logon completes. And also before Windows could connect to my wireless access point which I use for internet access. So this prevented activation over the internet.
Since I could not activate over the internet I was left with phone activation at 3 am. Since I am in Russia right now I did not want to make a phone call to the US as it would be quite expensive. In retrospect I could have fired up Skype which I use all the time, or used my company mobile phone which Microsoft pays for anyways. But not every traveler has this option. So I selected Russia for the telephone wizard and it presented me with two telephone numbers, one for Moscow and one toll free for the rest of the country. First off, the city code for Moscow has changed and the telephone number now appears invalid. Certainly this sort of thing could be fixed with Windows update, but worse yet these are the types of mistakes that travelers will not catch and even locals who are frustrated by activation can easily miss. So I decided to try the toll free number. I do speak Russian, albeit only quasi-fluently. But I can get around. But I was not able to communicate with the person, for a reason which would be determined the next day.
So now I cannot activate. Fortunately I still have two and a half days left. Just for curiosity I decide to select Cyprus our other home country. Cyprus is always being left out and included with Greece and so on. I expected maybe a telephone number in Greece as the commercial ties are quite close. What appeared? Yet another mistake. The toll free number for Cyprus I have serious doubts about. It is in a format that does not appear to be any valid telephone in Cyprus, at least not for several years now. And the backup number is a number in Lebanon, not exactly the best place to try to call right now with the full scale fighting going on.
Internal Server error
While fiddling around I decided to double click on the reminder icon which appears after you complete logon. It will not let you try to reactivate over the internet now that you actually have an internet connection, but it promises to tell me about all the benefits of activation. Amuse me, lets try it. 404 page not found and furthermore yields an internal server error from a Microsoft server, even proving this is not some goofy proxy or connection error from my ISP. Now mind you I do work for Microsoft. If it is this easy for me, what kind of experience do you think the average end user is having?
Activated, finally!
Finally the next day I had my wife call the toll free number and activate my computer for me. Wow, now there is a first - My wife fixing my computer! After she finishes she comments that the person was a bit difficult to understand and that they spoke with an accent. Now I have no problem with accents, surely in Russian I speak with an accent. And I know this call was probably routed to Ireland or some call center location, but if for a country with such a large population as Russia there are not even native speakers, what do users in Uzbekistan have to go through? At least we solved the riddle of why I could not communicate with the person, for once it was not my lack of vocabulary but two non native speakers trying to understand each others pronunciations.
Why my wife loves XP Activation
So why does my wife love XP Activation so much? Is it to spite me? Well it could be, but not this time. It is actually more simple than that. The next day she had scheduled a dentist appointment for me. Normally I resist these, but when she asked me "Are you ready to go to the dentist?" I replied "Sure, after the activation fights last night I am in for something less painful."
And finally the lesson learned: I hate the concept of activation more, and always delay activation until all hardware drivers are installed.
There's more - Catch 22
Just a second ago I warned that all drivers should be installed first. But many drivers require certain patches, especially certain service pack levels to be installed first. But you cannot use Windows Update until you activate.
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