Activation

Anyone know how many times you can activate Windows XP? I have had to reinstall 4 times in 6 months because of problems and have had to phone in because of installing on newer computer.

 

If you are using the same computer and same licence without changing your hardware you can backup your Windows Activation state.

Before formatting copy the following files to a safe place that will still be available after wiping your hard drive such as a USB Flash Drive or a Floppy Disk.

Once you have formatted and reinstalled window you will need to reboot into safe mode by restarting your computer and pressing F8 until the boot menu appears and selecting Safe Mode

Once in safe mode rename the exisiting files (if present) to:

Then copy the 2 files from your 'safe place' into the system32 folder.

Now when you reboot into Normal mode your windows will be activated.

 

You can also backup Office XP Activation in a similair manner by backing up the folowing files:

and for office 2003

 

Thanks for the help,matt

 

To give a more direct answer, you have unlimited activations, on the same machine it was originally activated on.

 

Sorry lol, I didn't actually answer the actual question, although it was 'nearly' relevant

 

Thank you all for your excellent help.Its appreciated