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Hardware ID has changed. Activate Now

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First time here. I bought Acronis TI 2013 29 days ago! Family version, one for the desktop, one for my wife's laptop. Both run Windows 8. No issue with the laptop. However, with the desktop I get the message "Hardware ID has changed. Activate Now". I have been getting this for all of the time that I have had it installed, on and off. I have simply put the key in and it has reactivated. However, I put the key in again today and it has not reactivated. Any idea what is wrong, and any possible solutions?

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Glenn,

First run a repair install of 2013, just run the installer again and you will be offered a repair option.

Is the desktop part of a network domain, and has been connected and disconnected from it?

Is there anything that you can think of with your desktop that might make a program think hardware has been changed or altered?

When you say it hasn't reactivated, did you get an error or warning message, and if so, what?

Hi Colin,
Appreciate your response. I have run the installer again, using repair option, and all looks good. I'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

Yes, desktop is part of a network. It has not been disconnected. My wife's laptop runs on the same network, and no problems with her installation. The desktop is a Dell, 3 years old. I did upgrade to 8MB ram (just before getting Acronis), and every now and again the computer crashes (and smiles at me, :)). However, there is no correlation between this and the activation issue.

In the last week, I got the message : "Hardware ID has changed, something about serial number, Activate now". Sorry, I should have kept a record of the middle instruction. Sometimes I would hit Activate Now and it would activate. Sometimes I would reenter the product key and that would work. Today, I could do neither to get it to work.

Reread your note, and run the installer again. Since my wife's laptop runs fine, I think is must be something to do with my desktop.

Let's see what happens now.

Thanks again,

Glenn

I just installed ATIH2014 (an upgrade to 2013) and had problems. had to download the file twice then got an error message with no error number. however I could bring up ATIH2014 but had the message at the bottom of the screen about 'hardware id has changed'.

you say to run a 'repair install'. how do I do that? I didn't change any hardware so am very confused. can I just ignore the message. i'm reluctant to click on 'change serial number' or 'activate now'.

thanks for any help.

To run a repair install, you just need to run the 2014 installer again, it will now offer you a 'repair' option instead of 'install'.

You can't change the 'serial number' as you only have one serial number, entering anything else into this field might stop you being able to install 2014 altogether. It is designed for people who upgrade to Premium version after purchasing the stan dard or who for example decide to buy a 'family pack' licence after buying a single user or changing the trial version to a full version.

'Activate now', this could be down to the Acronis activation server being unavailable or your internet connection being down when TI goes to check (it does this in the background at various times). If it is a lack of access to the internet or the Acronis server being down, the message will disappear once TI has made contact. If on the other hand for some reason it is failing to update on your PC that it has activated itself, a repair install may solve the problem or, you could try clicking the activation button. The worst thing that can happen is that it will tell you 'too many activations' and then will offer you a wizard to 'move' the serial number. All you then do is delete your current PC from the list that you will see, and then reactivate the PC.

ID numbers can change if you were connected to a managed domain (such as a work environment) when you first activated and then moved the PC to your home network. They will also change if you alter the PC name at some stage.

thanks for your comments. wouldn't you know, as soon as I posted that question and signed out, I found a box on running a repair install underneath IE. I ran the repair and it worked fine. I wanted to get back to this forum but couldn't find it quickly.

thanks again