XP Home SP3 Activation Problem

I have a PC here and the motherboard died. I installed a new motherboard and performed a repair install of XP as one normally would when swapping out a motherboard. The install went fine. The PC now boots up and says that I must activate before I can log on, this OK, I've seen it before, no big deal, I click on "Activate now". And that's the end of the road. The activation wizard never opens, and CTRL+ALT+DEL does nothing, and I'm stuck looking at the wallpaper and I can move the pointer, but that's it. However- I can boot to a desktop in safe mode. Is it possible to activate in safe mode? I'm pretty sure it's not, but I thought I'd ask. Does anyone have any insight here?

THANKS!

 

UPDATE- I can't boot to a desktop in safe mode anymore. I guess it let me do it once, and that was it. Now I get the "Activate Now, but you can't activate in safe mode so restart in normal mode" message.

:cry

 

In case anyone is wondering, I am NOT trying to "hack" activation. I have a legit key, legit XP disc, etc. I just now booted to a PECD and I can access the hard drive, and I can surf the web. How can I activate via PE? There's gotta be a way to do it. Or if I can figure out how to get the activation wizard to come up so I can phone in the ID number, that would be fine too. Whatever works! I need this activated and I don't think a clean install is an option.

 

Try the following:

Boot your XP Home Disk
Open the Recovery Console
Run "chkdsk /r /p"
Reboot

I doubt this will work, but I'm curious if it helps.

If this doesn't work you can try another Repair install, but I doubt that will work either.

I think your pretty much stuck into doing a full clean install of XP Home.

Sorry for the bad news.