Activation Answer Needed

I'm retired but I do some small time PC repair in my neighborhood - mostly just to stay mentally active.

There have been numerous occasions when people brought me Windows XP PCs that were in such bad shape that a reinstall was the only option.

Now over the years I've accumulated XP disks from Gateway, Dell, HP and Microsoft. Both Home and Professional. If their PC happens to be be from one of those manufacturers, the actual install goes without a hitch, although I usually have to get them to SP3, IE8, and update the drivers, etc.

But when I have to reinstall on an off brand (sometimes something I've never even heard of) I run into problems.

Now these are PCs running legitimate copies of the OS, but since the people have no OEM disks for the machine I'm forced to reinstall using whatever CDs I have. In these cases only, the system always asks for a product code.

Invariably the product code does not work (even when installing with the Microsoft disk), and I get no help when I try to activate by phone, MS giving me some blather about having to search online for the proper disks for that manufacturer.

This is a relatively poor neighborhood where people don't have the money (or time) for me to search for the manufacturer, find out if they have recovery CDs, pay for them with a credit card, and wait a week. Or search on ebay for the disks. And I have a difficult time explaining to them (and to myself) why a PC that they purchased at a retail store several years ago, that has a 25 digit product key on a sticker affixed to the bottom of their laptop or desktop cannot be activated with that code.

I've tried a 'hack' that I found online, but it only got us 30 days in which it looked like everything was working fine. Then they would get into an activation loop where the PC's OS would say it had to be activated, but clicking on the OK button would only display a msg indicating that XP had already been activated.

I don't have the resources to search the country for all the installation CDs I might require - CDs that in years past were ALWAYS included in the purchase of a PC, but no more.

There must be something that can be done to help people who bought a Windows from a retailer who failed to supply disks.

 

Perhaps this will help, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312295/en-us.

 

Since this link is to a Microsoft site, the very same people who refused to help me over the phone, I'm extremely skeptical that this will do nothing more than get me back to a place that requires a product key to activate.

And, of course, that will only allow me to input the key from their sticker, which will only tell me that the product key is invalid, etc, etc....

I'm looking for a way to either use their legitimate product key, or to bypass it entirely (as I do if I reinstall XP on a Dell PC using a Dell CD).

 

can you try the following:

1. Restart the machine.
2. Choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt by pressing F8 before the windows loading screen.
3. type “explorer” or “c:” in the command prompt (This will bring up “My Computer” or “Explorer”.
4. Re-install IE8 from a flash drive. During the install of IE8, it may remove older version of IE and ask you to reboot. If ask, restart the computer in the same manner as step 1-3 and re-install IE8.
5. After sucessfully installing IE8, reboot computer in normal mode and go through the activation using the phone option.

 

boweasel,

You may be correct in your assumption, and I only posted it because it told how to fix the problem that you mentioned. I've never had to use it myself. You mentioned having Microsoft CDs, so I'm assuming that they are unbranded OEM CDs? Another approach is this, providing that you can access the hard drive on the machine and it has the necessary folder on it. Hope this helps! http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19133441-Make-your-own-Windows-XP-CD.

 

Hello,
If I had to reinstall the OS from one of those machines, I would look at the PID and see if it is an OEM license or a retail license. Then I would use either an OEM or retail disk accordingly with the following.

First, I would copy the wpa.dll and the wpa.bak file. This is the file that keeps track of any hardware changes. I would then find the Product Key with something like Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder. Finally I would get the hard drive volume key. This gets changed every time the hard drive is formatted.

Transferring Windows XP Activation Information

Hard Disk Serial Number Changer

Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder

All this assumes you can get into the system. If not, you could try a BARTPE bootable CD.

 

Okay thisisu, you're gonna have to expand a little on the why's and wherefore's...

How does reinstalling IE8 from a flash drive have anything to do with activating XP? They are not (actually were not) having a problem with Internet Explorer (or Mozilla Firefox, for that matter - their browser of choice)

Secondly, even if I am given the option to activate, is it not going to ask me for a product key? And we already know that the one from their sticker ain't getting me nowhere....

I did try the activate by phone once before on another couple's PC (when the product key I typed was called invalid). I had to read off this 64 character code to a machine, and was told it was invalid as well. So why should the activate by phone work this time?

And once again. how does a reinstall of IE figure into the mix?

 

http://supportpcs.co.uk/installcd/winxp.html
http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetupdisk.shtml
I have used the second link to create an install CD for XP Home that worked well after a few minor changes with IMGBurn. You will need the i386 file from the original installation, once that file was corrupted as well, in which case used a retail CD and the product key changer program from Microsoft. Best of luck in your endeavor...( If all else fails you could try a free OS from the GNU Linux distributions, although most people will frown on change.)

 

What I posted was to get around the "Activation Loop". It will allow you get enough time to get the ethernet driver for said PC. The method I described though is really only used on computers that we ended up changing out a motherboard with, but kept their existing hard drive.

My guess is, the customer may have a retail install of windows xp, in that case, you'll need retail CDs, not OEMs.

I don't know why IE8 is thrown into the mix tbh, all I know is that it has worked for me plenty of times.

If you're doing a brand new clean install though, and not a repair, and the product key doesn't work.. That's a different issue, like I was saying about the retail vs oem.

 

The activation loops that I've encountered thus far have all been able to be circumvented by starting in Safe Mode. Of course, that in of itself is no solution. It just means I can access the PC, the registry, etc

That would be the crux of the situation then. I'm guessing that the 3 Windows XP machines that had to have the OS reinstalled were all OEM PCs. I have XP Home disks from Dell, HP, Microsoft, and an XP Pro that I downloaded and burned as an iso image.

But if I understand you correctly, this method will not work when I'm trying to use an OEM CD to install XP on another OEM PC. ???

So, anybody....
Is there any method whereby I can use, say a Dell CD to reinstall (not a repair install) Windows XP on an emachines desktop, or an Averatec laptop? Those are 2 of the machines that gave me problems. One had been purchased from Staples, the other from BestBuy. Both of them had legitimate 25 character product keys that were deemed invalid when I installed the OS.

I'm simply trying to help people as cheaply as possible to get their operating systems restored. And I certainly am not in the financial position of having to go out and purchase retail versions of XP Home, XP Pro, Vista Home Premium, and Windows 7. That's at least 600 bucks.

 

I guess I probably should have mentioned that, after the first instance of an invalid key, I ran both the Magic Jelly bean utility and Belarc on the 2 other XPs that needed a reinstall. Running from safe mode, both PCs showed the same key as the sticker. So that was not the problem. In 2 instances a 'Repair Install' from the CD completed successfully but failed to solve the corruption problem. Ditto for chkdsk /r. (Let me also note that when the 'Repair Install' option was available when booting from a CD I was never prompted for a key)

Thanks, but I pretty much know all that stuff. I even used another method when repair install was not available, where I copied files from the System32/Config folder to a backup, deleted the originals, copied versions of those files from the Repair folder to the Config folder, etc,... all to no avail

Apparently there is. Years ago I had a similar problem with my own XP PC, and I got ahold of a tech guy at Microsoft who had a heart. I had already done a clean install of XP using a Gateway CD on what I believe was an Acer laptop. The OS was working perfectly, but I only had 30 days to activate, and the product code on my laptop didn't work. Neither did the activate by phone.

This guy took over my computer remotely, made incredibly fast changes to system fields and registries, and after about 15 minutes I was activated, able to install all Windows updates, and the 30 day countdown was gone. If only I could have recorded what he did and slowed it down...

I just assumed that someone on this forum would be able to give a step by step recreation of what he might have done.