No you assholes. It is the EXACT configuration that I installed Windows under. NOT ONE CHANGE HAS BEEN MADE.
It is XP Pro, and it happened when I rebooted from the update today. Now it is telling me I have three days. What should I do? Somehow I am not seeing any “Genuine Advantage” to this, at least for me! 
call the Microsoft number and explain.
I must supplicate myself to use what I paid for? Because their software is mistaken about my hardware?
/runs off to short MS
The thing is, I think this may have happened before, and I just went ahead with the re-authorization. Anybody know how many bites you get at the apple?
I’m not the biggest MS fan ever, but I don’t see a big problem here. I’d imagine a driver update changed what some hardware looks like - revalidating (or whatever it’s called) in XP takes a couple of clicks and a couple of seconds. If it fails and pouts at you, then you’ll have reason to be uptight…
If you end up having to call, make sure you answer correctly when they ask how many PCs this copy of Windows is installed on. Hint: it’s not three.
If I try to activate it online, and it fails, does it become unusable or is there a grace period that I still have that I can call?
Maybe someone else somehow got a handle of your Win XP key?
They installed on theirs, and now windows thinks their is the genuine copy, hence hardware change.
I don’t see how. I am in possession of it and it would take me hours to find it in all the mess here, never mind some kind of key stealing cat burglar! And chancing on it is mathematically, well not impossible, but much harder than winning three or four lotteries in a row!
Unless somebody hacked a list of keys off MS servers… no guessing involved, and one of them was yours.
Or an MS employee sold a list. Nah, something like that could never happen to a company with such a stand up reputation and such a cadre of honest and loyal employees. No siree. Never…
Just call them. This happened to me once, and before I ever reached a human, one of the choices was (paraphrased) “have you recently made and configuration changes to the computer?”
I answered “yes” and the 'bot re-authorized me on the spot.
You may not be so lucky, but I think they’re used to this [del]bullcrap[/del] possibility.
And just to head off anything off-topic, linux is not an option for me. 
My main software must use Windows or Mac and only cares about fast hardware, so Windows it is and must remain.
I doubt you’ll have to do anything but go through the automated phone activation process. its a bit of a pain but its not like the jackboots will come knock your door down.
that’s not how it works; Bill Gates is not sitting in his command center in a sunless warren below Fort Redmond, monitoring each and every Windows license out there. whatever file holding the activation hashes was corrupted or deleted during an update. congratulations on finding a minor bug in a 12 year old OS. reactivate it and move on.
If you don’t have your product key handy this free little app will find it for you instantly. And as far as I know it is perfectly legal to use.
Actually, I kinda think he is. Chuckling softly and stroking his cat.
No No. Bill gates doesn’t waste time on cats. He laughs maniacally while playing with his mosquito death ray.
And after that mosquito death ray Bill Gates give an update on his concern about food.
wearing the obligatory Nehru jacket, of course 
The first post was correct. Call it supplication if you must, but Microsoft has a vested interest in protecting their intellectual property. No one I know has ever has an issue getting validated when they had to call a serial in to MS, so although there may be a philosophical difference here you will at least be able to use your software.
This may be a good time to upgrade to a modern OS. Have you considered Windows 7?
Did you have a thumb drive plugged in when you rebooted? I remember this happened to me a few years ago when a friend left her thumb drive in my computer. I don’t remember the brand, but it never happened with other thumb drives since then.
What I wonder is what happens after this year and XP becomes officially unsupported. It will be the first time that Microsoft has had to deal with this, AFAIK, and it will set the precedent for how all subsequent versions of Windows will be handled.
(I know that Windows 2000 did not have activation, but I don’t know if Microsoft had a non-OS product that did.)
Would this really change things enough? I once (when I had XP) temporarily stuck an internal drive in (connected to the internal ribbon cable) to copy some data from it and nothing happened other than “new hardware detected”. That is to say, I thought it was the motherboard that was used to identify the computer, so you would only have a problem (in theory) if you replaced the motherboard.