XP Pro Activation

Hi,

the volunteer agency where I work (unpaid) has just been donated three new HP PC's all with XP Pro already installed. In order to provide some level of support I need to install a copy on my home PC. I have the CD with the install code, but every attempt I make to activate it using XPKey.exe from the Blue list fails. Any help would be appreciated.

As to piracy issues, I have been cutting code for thirty years - starting with a paper tape absolute loader for a PDP11/05 in 1974. For me s/w has "always" been licenced on a "user" basis. For PC's as long as there was only ever one user at any point in time then the number of machines was immaterial, and I find this process of locking s/w to a specific machine quite reprehensible, and only possible from a monopolistic entity. Having experienced many many years of M$ predatory business practices I have no respect for how they choose to control the market for their products. Pirates don't just come in small boats, they also come in aircraft carrier corporate battle groups.

Granny Nerd.

 

Granny, You've been code monkeying as long as I've been alive; and while I completely , totally and thoroughly understand and respect your stand point on piracy, I would like to point out that only the OEM licenses are tied to specific PC's. Retail licenses are per installation and activation may be required depending on what has changed in your PC based on a point system where each hardware component is weighted. Additionally, Major Geeks prides itself in being anti-piracy. We do not sell or promote software that has the ability to hack/crack software for use without payment.

XPKey , in my understanding, is a key generator. This would lead me to believe that you do not have a licensed key. Given that information I humbly request you understand our position on this matter and the fact that we cannot offer you assistance in obtaining use of software illegally regardless of our understanding of MS's monopolistic tendencies.

If Major Geeks can be of further assistance to you in the future, please let us know.

Respectfully,
Jim Losi

 

Dude, I'm with you 110% on that one! Sorry I don't have suggestions for you, though.


Steve

 

Hi Jim,

I respect your views on piracy, but a knowledge of IT history might help explain where I am coming from.

In the early days computer companies made their money out of selling h/w, and s/w was provided to help sell the h/w.

DEC even used to provide source code for it's s/w products. MS-DOS was a direct rip off of DEC's RT-11. Later when Windows 2.01 was released, it had Zerox's graphical user interface and Carousel's task swapper.

Later a paper on NT internals showed the influence of DEC's MicroVMS philosophy. Which wasn't that surprising considering Gates had poached the whole MicroVMS team from DEC.

Reverse engineering other companies products and then releasing them at half the price was the name of the game. When the competitor went out of business, M$ would raise the price of their equivalent.

I could go on and on, but see little to be gained. Many people whinge about M$, but few have even the vaguest notion of what has really taken place. By all means seek to protect them, but at least understand what you are protecting.

Granny Nerd.

 

XP activation can be started by opening the run command and typing "oobe/msoobe /a" without the quote marks. If it a legit copy, you'll be able to activate and register it.