Hello,
There was a licensing change where the COA keys now require Phone
Activation rather than Internet Activation.
From the link below:
In order to reduce a significant source of piracy, Microsoft has disabled
online activation for COA Keys that are attached to PCs that have been
pre-activated by OEMs. This change should have a minimal impact on licensed
users who generally do not use their COA Key to activate the software
because it has been pre-activated by the OEM. However, if a licensed end
user needs to activate because the OEM pre-activation does not work as
expected (e.g., after the replacement of a defective motherboard) they can
do so via phone-based activation.
To help minimize the potential impact on licensed users, this whitepaper
provides steps licensed end users can take to preserve OEM pre-activation
when reinstalling the operating system using any of the four scenarios
outlined below (sysprep, OOBEinfo, manual and unattended).
You can use the workaround in the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/oempreac.mspx
Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
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<From: "Rixter" <
[email protected]>
<Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment
<Subject: Incorrect Product Key following Sysprep
<Date: 17 Feb 2006 10:43:36 -0800
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<We've been using Sysprep forever to prepare our PCs before Ghosting.
<Once the image is downloaded we enter the COA Product Key on the side
<of the Dell PC.
<
<For the past several weeks/months we've been exepriencing problems
<since we upgraded to XP SP2.
<
<The two problems we're suffering from:
<1) After entering the Product Key we get an activation error and we
<have to call Microsoft for each activation. This is VERY time
<consuming. I believe I fixed that by running Sysprep -factory.
<2) Our activation is only good for 30 days before expiration
<
<What am I doing wrong?
<
<Help?!?
<
<