I've had to deal with this for the first time, and my curiosity is really wondering what the specifics of how it works are. I've had a legit retail key for years, and I guess I've used it too many times online over the course of various PCs and I was forced to give the phone activation a try. 5 minutes later, it worked! So my questions are this 1) What's the science behind how it works? (how does it know the key pair, how does it work fully offline, etc) 2) Why would online activation not work, but phone activation work if its been used too many times? Do you get an "extra amount" if called in via phone? 3) Does this register it properly with the activation servers on M$ end, so if a reformat happens with the key the activation is picked up? Or does it require another call in? 4) Is the CID (Confirmation ID) they give you something that you can reuse indefinitely? If anyone has answers for any of these questions, i'd appreciate it! I just find it fascinating and haven't seen it touched on much.
I believe you get a grace of 5 more activations by phone activation if I remember correctly Told by a MS employee. Basicly it comes down on the question did you used it on other computers
I don't know the technical info about this. But, afaik, with windows 10 all non VL keys will become hwid, with hwid there is no need for phoning anyone anymore, it's tied to the hardware and can be reused as many times as needed. In the past with the only windows i ever bought for myself, XP home coem, i called many times after the initial 5 re-uses of the key, and back then you got a real person on the phone, and whatever i answered to her question (it was always the same woman), she gave me the new sequence of numbers to enter and i was activated again (mobo died was my main lie)