Actually, they can't "ban your hardware". Many versions of Windoze prior to XP don't have ID codes that are traceable so that's not how they ban you.
Your computer is assigned a 'stick' IP address by your ISP (if you have broadband - dialup is a different monkey). That means when the lease is up on your IP, your computer prefers to request the IP it just had (hence the 'sticky') it's not a static IP, which is generally too costly for an ISP to provide without an additional fee to the consumer. *IF* you wish to change your IP, you can call the ISP, hope you get a tech support person who has a clue and beg them to reset it manually. or you can do what everyone else does and that's turn off your cable modem or dsl modem for anywhere from 12 hours to 3 days and hope that you catch it over a lease expiration period. When your computer comes back online by turning that modem back you, an IP will be requested and hopefully it will be a new one.
That being said, if VMK finds that you have gotten around a ban in this manner, they may just deny you access to your characters completely and ban the new IP -- this is just speculation based on my 15 years of running other internet multiplayer games.