Can't activate: msoobe.exe does nothing!

[Rowen Gunn]

I'll start by saying this is a fully legit copy of Windows XP Home with valid
OEM key.

My client's laptop HD failed, so I got another and recovered nearly 100% of
it to another drive. XP was a little wacky do I did a repair install using an
XP Home SP3 OEM disk. Worked fine as expected, boots into windows and... it
won't activate.

MSOOBE.EXE Runs, however it just sits there doing nothing. You can see it in
taskmanager taking up around 10mb of memory but it's not doing a thing. No
windows, nothing. You can manually end it in taskmanager and run it again,
and it will for maybe 1-2s use CPU and then go back to 0% usuage and just sit
there at 10mb ram doing nothing.

However, the timer is still counting down to activate XP. My client doesn't
want to reformat the PC either, so I need to figure out what's causing
MSOOBE.EXE not to work. I've noticed this before when repair installing with
an SP3 disk but it was once out of a 100 repairs so figured it was a fluke.

 

[Sean Wilson]

Have you tried running "%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a" from Start

 

[Rowen Gunn]

Yes I have, and sadly it produces the exact same result.

 

[Richard]

Have you tried SFC /SCANNOW from Command Prompt or Start>Run?
Have you checked Event Viewer for an error report on msoobe.exe?
(MSOOBE = MicroSoft Out Of Box Experience)

Yes I have, and sadly it produces the exact same result.

- - -

 

[jefflang]

I have been banging my head against the wall with problem and found the answer!

What happened: Repair installed a PC and when it tried to go into Windows it said it had to be activated and then just sat at the desktop wallpaper.

I tried the Reg key permissions edit and nothing. I tried to "reset" the timer and that worked but coudln't get msoobe.exe to run.

Solution:
I installed internet explorer 8 and BINGO. So why did that fix it? The customer had IE8 installed before I repair installed XP. The repair install put IE6 back on there and that is what was causing the problem. You can get into the PC by running it in Safe Mode (WITHOUT NETWORKING SUPPORT) and get in the Admin account.