So, yesterday, I installed and activated Photoshop, and then restarted my PC. Only to find a little surprise waiting for me on Windows booting.
I got a “Windows Activation” window saying that my Activation Period has expired! WTF? I activated Vista from day one, why is this happening!?!? So, it gave me some choices: Activate Online, Activate By Phone, Re-enter Product Key and Run Windows in Reduced Functionality Mode (basically you can only go online with IE7 to buy a new product key 😛 ). You could also close the Window and go to the “logged out screen” and either login (which brought up the Windows Activation Window) or Shut down/restart/sleep/etc your computer. In the bottom, right-hand corner it said “This copy of Windows is not Genuine”. What do you mean it’s not genuine? I bought it legally, and the day it was released, to boot.
I decided to press Activate Online. But, that failed, so I clicked close. It went to the login screen. So, I clicked my username and it brought me back to the Activation Screen. So, I clicked activate by Phone. Which gave me a number to call, and the numbers I’m supposed to punch in. But, wait, there were no numbers! Just blank spaces where the numbers should have been.
Okay, so I decided to close out that Window, and restart my PC. So, when it came back up, the Windows Activation windows was still there. Except, this time, it said “Windows has been activated successfully”! So, I close out of that Window, and log in. Everything seems fine. Except that it still says “This copy of Windows is not Genuine” in the bottom, right-hand corner!
So, I right-click on “Computer” and go “Properties”. I then scrolled to the bottom of the Window that came up and it said “Windows is activated”. Weird. So, I decided to Restart my computer, yet again.
So, I restarted, and when Windows came back up, everything was fine! So, maybe what happened was, when I installed Photoshop, some Windows system files got messed up, so when I restarted it said Windows wasn’t activated. But, after 2 more restarts, the files recovered and Windows was fine, and as it should be…
Hopefully, Windows won’t say my copy of Windows isn’t genuine, again…
