Just found out the hard way that the following things result in unintentional deauthorization (i.e. you will have to consume another 1 of 5 of your authorizations to reactivate) of your machine to play iTunes purchased protected AAC's: 1.) replacing the motherboard of your Macbook Pro (had mine changed twice because of faulty logic board) 2.) doing a complete restore of system and user files via Time Machine 3.) transferring all your files to a new machine (remember to deauthorize old machine before disposing / erasing files on it.) I've consumed 4 out of 5 of my authorizations unintentionally because of the above. Thought I'd share the experience so that others may avoid encountering the same problem. P.S. Read on the Apple support site that I need to wait out the year before resetting my authorized machine count. Any way of getting around this?
If you log in to your account in itunes You can reset/deauthorize all your machines and have it set back to 0. I did this way back but not sure if they changed the policy
You can only do this once a year. I've unintentionally used up my machine count because of logic board replacements and Time machine restore.
This Apple KB article covers everything you need to know about the iTunes Store authorization and deauthorization. Make sure that you de-authorize your computer before you send it in for service, especially if the logic board needs to be replaced. Deauthorize all Computers option once per year still applies till now, there is no other workaround for this policy, however Apple do give special considerations depends on the situation. You can plead your case through Apple Support help form for a deauthorize all request if needed.
