iTunes Authorisation Sensativity

[WiseHacker]

Hopefully someone can answer this for me.

I recently after installing the Windows 7 Beta on my Vista box (I kept Vista as 7 expires) I found that iTunes was reporting that I had to authorise the computer.  As the only thing had changed with the PC, I assumed is was a simple matter of letting iTunes have its way and it would see I had already authorised the system.

Turns out I was wrong.  I lost an authorisation token and when I attempted to unauthorised iTunes on Windows 7, iTunes assumed both my Windows 7 and Vista installed were unauthorised.

If someone could enlighten me on how sensitive the authorisation is, I'd be greatful as I don't want to make the same mistake more than once.

[OrcishIncubus]

It's pretty sensitive, as you've seen.

If you reformat and forget to unauthorize, you lose one.

If you authorize a random computer just to listen to a song (say at work or school or a friend's house), that's another lost, assuming you forget to unauthorize.

Basically if you authorize, just remember to unauthorize before removing iTunes.

You get a full reset once a year.

(I've lost like three authorizations from reformats a while back, but I was able to reset last year, I still have one authorized to a friend's computer that I don't have access to anymore, and I authorized a school computer and forgot... then I go back to the lab the next semester to unauthorize it, and it wasn't there... yay me...)

[WiseHacker]

Ah, so I'm not going mad.  It is very sensitive.

Thanks for that.  I though the authorisation was hardware based but it seems to account my OS too.

[OrcishIncubus]

I think it installs something on the computer or something... some kind of file that says "this computer is authorized to this account."

and when that file is removed, it recognizes as being unauthorized to the iTMS... but if it just goes missing, it changes nothing server-side...