DON’T replace multiple drivers on XP

I’m a computer enthusiast, who likes to keep his PC squeaky clean, as efficient as possible. In the course of this, I end up uninstalling and reinstalling a lot of drivers in one go.

This is NOT safe.

Windows has a protection system, which doesn’t allow you to take make copies of you hard drives which has XP on it. If it detects major hardware changes, it will ask you to reactivate within 3 days, flat. Now, the thing is that, even with an original copy of Windows, you can reactivate only so many number of times, before that activation key becomes invalid. Unfortunately for me, I have done this a large number of time, and was in for quite a shock when … <BUZZ> … Activation Key Invalid.

I started hyperventilating.

But, regained composure pretty soon. I realised that I have an original copy and have no fear from calling up Microsoft. They even had the Indian call centre number when I clicked ‘Activate Using Telephone’, which is rare for out-of-India software. It was a breeze, nothing short of a breeze. I managed to do it without even talking to a call centre executive/employee/prole/whateva…

But, for people with cracked versions of XP, it doesn’t matter, coz’ activation itself is disabled (depends on what cracking method you’ve used).