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[jereboam]

When I turned my PC on this morning, it told me that the hardware had changed significantly since I installed Windows XP and so the operating system needed to be re-activated. 

I don't think I've had the case open for 18 months, and I havent added any new bits for 2 or 3 years. 

Rather than attempt to fix the problem on-line and risk being told that I needed to buy a new licence, I phoned the Microsoft number and sorted it out that way.

Anybody know what it's all about?  The OS is genuine, and I've been signed up to Genuine Advantage since I installed it.  The PC did re-boot itself following some sort of unspecified serious error a few days ago - could that have caused it?

[STMO999]

Cant answer your question Jereboam but I am beginning to believe that computers have a 'mind' of their own. My son has been playing web based games for ages. Last week our computer decided that he couldn't do this any more as we needed flash player from adobe. We've had flash player for yonks but I decided that maybe there was a later version. Tried downloading flash player 10 and the computer went mental, telling me that it had to close down as the site was trying to download malware. From adobe? Took me ages to convince it that all was ok and to chill out.

[Terbs]

Can't answer exactly, but it COULD be something in an update from Microsoft. They do occasionally cause the computer to come up with weird things, but if comp is working ok I should not bother too much....or do a system restore back a few days. When the updates come in, the same thing should happen, if that is the cause.
The dreaded blue screen of death can cause a few things.

[jereboam]

Having spent 40 years developing software, I usually blame cosmic radiation - there's no other explanation for some one-off software errors.

It's amazing what a particularly energetic gamma particle can do to a silicon chip, I always say.   

[Chris_H]

There are probably a couple of possible reasons apart from the cosmic rays.

Backup batteries can go down and so some configuration settings can get blasted.  Also flash ram is not always very robust and often has limited write-cycles so the same thing can happen.

Also, don't forget that plugging a device into a different USB port can make that wonderful OS think everything's changed!

Where's the smiley with a delirious grimace and a thumbs-down?