XP CD does not match COA

Last fall, I had to buy a computer that would run XP for college. I bought a whitebox from a local builder, who has since disappeared. It came with XP installed plus a shrink-wrapped copy and a COA sticker. It runs slow, even though I upped the original 128 meg RAM to 640 meg. A computer magazine published a list of ways to speed up XP that included the advice to re-install XP. I tried but the install failed when I tried to copy the key from the COA. I got a copy of KeyGenDOS and found a different key but the install would not accept that either.

Now, every time I IPL, I have to quickly move the highlighted line to "Windows XP Professional" or it will start demanding the Product Activation Key. I feel this is being called from some file the install program has put on my machine but I can not figure out what. In another forum, I found %windir%\system32\undo_guimode.txt suggested but this file is not on my computer.

What file do I have to kill to stop the install? confused

 

It is not a problem with your COA or your installation disc. When you reinstalled, you didn't delete all partitions and format the hard drive, did you? You now have two different versions of the XP OS, one of which is not activated. You already installed a copy of XP using the product key from the COA. MS will not let you use that same key to activate a second installation. You need to remove the unactivated XP installation or you could delete the partition(s) from your hard drive, reformat and reinstall.