Win XP Activation Impossible

I have just bought a new hard disk and I attempted to put a fresh Win XP Pro installation on it. Almost everything runs smoothly, and when I am finally ready to logon to the Administrator account I get the message that I need to activate the product in order to be able to use it. Please note that this is before I even logon, nothing like the familiar "30 days notice".
It wouldn't be that much of a problem if I had to simply activate XP... I click "activate over the internet", but the computer is not able to connect to the internet. I retried a couple of times, rebooted and tried again, reinstalled XP and did it all over. Nothing. When I attempted to activate by phone, the place where I should see the "installation ID" was blank!!

I googled about it and I found this story that describes exactly the same thing that happened to me. I thought that I could apply the solution that he found, that is entering the system on safe mode and there installing drivers for the modem. I have a PIRELLI DRG A225G router. I called my ISP and the tech guy said that there are no drivers for the router.

With my old hard disk (and the old modem) I had reinstalled XP quite a few times, without problem. Could it be that the on-board drivers that came with XP pro, approximatelly 10 years ago, cannot recognize a modenr router? Please save me guys... I have spent almost a week back in the 20th century (without a PC @ home )

 

Routers do not need or use drivers so that is not your problem. The router itself already holds your login info and as long as it's powered up and plugged into the phone socket it should already be connected to your ISP. All it needs is for the PC to connect to it.

If your PC can't find the router for itself, as most wireless adapters can, then you are probably connected to the router by Ethernet cable, in which case the simplest solution is to use the XP Network Setup Wizard in Control Panel to set up your PC to router connection.

If you are still having problems then let us know as there are other ways we can deal with this.

 

Just reading that link again I think you are going to have to find the drivers for your PC's network card. When XP is installed it looks in its database for drivers for your system devices, including the network card, and installs them automatically for you. However if it can't find them, as seems to have happened in your case, you have to obtain them and install them yourself. Sometimes these are supplied on a separate drivers disk for OEM systems, but if you don't have that disk you will have to find the drivers from the manufacturer's website. You can then use the procedure in that linked article to get them installed.

 

I read back on your previous posts, and is this the MSI motherboard that you were building ?
If so, and you have the original disc that comes with a motherboard, you could update your drivers in safe mode from that. Might be easiest,

 

Thanks for the answers guys. However, I did not manage to pull it through. I was able to logon with Safe Mode, but then I didn't know how to manually upgrade the drivers. In the mo/bo CD I was able to locate a folder named "Ethernet", but since the .exe files were not working I was stuck.
Can you guide me through the driver installation? Which file should I pick when I get to manually select the directory of the driver?

 

OK, this sounds promising, as you have the mobo CD, so with that in the drive you need to create a new folder somewhere on your hard disk - the root of C:\ would be fine - and give it a name you will subsequently recognise, like 'NICdrivers'. Then copy the contents of the Ethernet folder on the CD to the new folder.

If you reboot normally and go into Device Manager you should see that the network card has a yellow ?, so right click that and take Update Driver and follow the prompts to navigate to your NIC driver folder at C:\

If that doesn't work then post back.

 

"normaly" you mean not in safe mode? Because SM is the only way to get into Windows. Not even SF with network will allow me to logon.
Am I looking to upgrade the drivers of the on-board network card, or the PCI modem (Smart Link 56k)? The modem appears in the Device Manager as "functioning". What file ending should the driver files have?

Also, is there any chance that I can salvage the activation files from the installation on my old HD? The disk was the only hardware change that I made.

 

Forget the PCI modem, it's the onboard network card we need the drivers for. Here's the key part of the article you linked to -

I went to the network device in Device Manager (it had the familiar yellow question mark that indicated there was a problem), clicked "update driver", pointed it to the folder containing the drivers for Windows XP for this laptop's network card, and installed.

Then I rebooted.

I didn't reboot into Safe Mode, just plain old default regular Windows.

And directly into Windows I went. No "you must first activate before you can login", just directly into Windows. And yes, once there I saw the expected "you have 30 days to activate" pop up.

And the network worked.

If you copy the drivers to your hard drive, as I said earlier, and in Safe Mode follow the above procedure, and providing this router is already configured with your login credentials it should boot and connect.

I'm not sure though that you have ever successfully connected with this router, and if not it may need further configuration.

 

The router was fine before the reinstall.

Ok, things got weird. I did find the yellow questionmark, next to a device named "Other PCI Device" and I was able to install drivers for it. I then reboot normally, I am not allowed to logon, instead I am prompted to imediatelly activate windows. I choose to activate over the internet and.... tadah! "Windows has been activated succesfully". But still can't logon!!!! I keep getting the "Please activate the product" message. I tried to do it by phone and this time the installation ID was there. I enter it to the recorded call, it gives me back the other number and I get the message that "Windows has already been activated". Of course no logon. I use the XP CD to repair the installation, try to activate over the internet and I get one more message that "windows has been activated". It seems that the rest of the system, other than my logon screen, understands that...

Any further ideas?

 

Since this is a clean XP Pro install on a new hard drive, why not simply wipe and re-install? Then activate using the phone-in option and you should be OK. Just don't set up a password during installation -you can set up a password later- and you shouldn't have any login issues. Also, be sure the time/date in the system BIOS is current BEFORE installing Windows. It may not seem like much, but if the BIOS time/date is off (esp by A LOT of time) it can cause all sorts of activation problems.

 

Can you tell us exactly what happens when you 'can't logon'? Do you get either of the two attached pics? If not, what exactly do you get?

 

I see the first image and when I click on the account I get the following message:
http://4windows.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Windows-XP-activation-fix.jpg

 

Hi Sailor welcome back, we have not seen you for a while here.

Sorry i can not help you with XP i have long forgotten anything i learned about it.

 

I just don't know what to advise, other than trying to find some way to talk to a real MS person about it. I know that XP does allow several activations before locking you out, and am wondering if perhaps this might account for this behaviour. DavidGP might be able to advise if he reads this.

 

I reinstalled last night and I keep getting the exact behaviour:
can't login -> driver update -> activation successful -> still can't login

 

Just out of curiosity -- was the XP disc you installed from SP1? I just ran into something similar, and until I updated to SP3 and Internet Explorer7, I couldn't connect to the internet. The SP1 disc had IE6, which apparently no longer is supported. Fortunately, I had a copy of SP3 and IE7 on the same cd, and as soon as I updated them, was able to connect to the internet.