Will I ever need to activate Windows on my computer again?
Maybe. You might have to activate Windows again if:
You make a significant hardware change to your computer, such as upgrading the hard disk and memory at the same time. If a major hardware change requires activating Windows again, you'll be notified and will have three days to activate Windows.
You reinstall Windows. In this case, you'll have 30 days to activate Windows again.
If you have to activate Windows again on the same computer, you don't need to buy a new product key. For more information, see Activate Windows 7 on this computer.
A simple solution to get round the need to activate when you reinstall Windows is backing up the required activation files and information from the old install, and then restoring it when the new install is complete.
Advanced Tokens Manager is a free and portable utility to backup and restore the activation information for any version of Windows Vista, 7 and Server 2008/2011 with a couple of clicks. It also supports Office 2010 activation backup and restore, not any previous versions like 2007/2003 though. What it does is back up the product key and a file called
tokens.dat
that holds the activation information for Windows and also Office 2010.