[downtime]

I'm a reseller, one machine I received had already auto activated, the one for myself, the other didn't auto activate until I installed it into the network it was going in. My own just prompted me to activate. Since I received it, I've installed two video cards, and this AM I added a hdd and installed XP Pro from an MSDN Universal Subscription. Dual boot is interesting. All was fine until I installed Open Office, then the activation window appeared, telling me the key I typed in was already in use. (On the side, yes, I have to tell my supplier to make sure not to choose auto activate, and I have to make sure myself it doesn't see the internet in case they don't, until all the hardware is installed. On the other hand, maybe that doesn't matter, you might have to make sure all the hardware is installed before installing Vista. If anyone knows, please speak up.) I called the number provided and it went as normal any time you have to call MS. Question is, how many times have you activated? I've had to activate many times with XP, about 30% of the time I had to call them, and was never refused. I won't have anything to do with cracked software, I run an honest business, but they don't know that. Anyway, the eula in Vista is different, so please post your experiences.

[Noyb]

I just activated the same copy of Vista HP .. from two different HDDs in the same computer via internet.
No problem.

[MowermanEd]

2 weeks after installing and activating Vista Business 32bit my Motherboard went bad. Since all 3 of my drives were 3 years old I felt I was on borrowed time with them also so I replaced MB with a different type/brand, replaced my 3 ide drives with a 250G and a 320G SATA drive and added 1 more Gig of memory for good measure. The only thing I didn't change was the processor. As expected, I failed reactivation and had to call. All they asked was if this was the only machine I had the software on, to which I replied "yes". Bingo, back in business.