RJ.W.H. said:
When prompted to call microsoft durring activation, I complete the
registration and then I get stuck in this loop. Those of you who
are here, understand the loop I am in. I am restoring an image
with intricate software installations that can not be easily
duplicated for several businesses and I manually update the OEM
product key everytime I use the image.
I am TRYING to do this legitamately and now I FAIL! The MicroSoft
support people cant/wont help me legitimize this copy of windows,
and I do not want to take a chance on sending illegal copies of
windows into the field. The enitre process is now being held up
because changing the product key through a tool provided by
MicroSoft has FAILED and I am stuck in this loop.
Is there anyone at MicroSoft willing to help?
RJ.W.H. said:
So, even though the wonderful tech's (who are actually just sales
people that know nothing about operating systems) could not figure
out why the "changing of a product key" from one copy of Windows XP
to another copy of Windows XP caused this ever ending loop, I was
able to determine the hardware manufacturer has origanally been
shipping us "Windows XP Pro Embedded", and now had converted to
shipping "Windows XP Professional".
This is the reason for the everlasting continuous loop that can not
be recovered from. Once the correct Product Key was obtained and
the machine was reimaged, everything was back to normal.
All this frustration just because I was trying to do the right
thing and make sure my customers had gotten the correct Product Key
updated. Other orginizations would just have shipped the dang
thing out as is because the people at MicroSoft have no idea
(unless of course if you give them a credit card number, in which
case that agent would simply tell you reinstall windows from
scratch and spend another 2 weeks installing all the additional
softwares and drivers EVERY time another system was purchased).
If you can't tell, I am quite disappointed in the support at
MicroSoft, and again, it's all because I just wanted to do the
right thing.
You still blame Microsoft for a problem caused (by your own admission) by
ther hardware manufacturer you chose to go with...?
The process you are choosing to go through (using OEM licensed images to
distribute to many computers) is not supported by Microsoft. In fact - for
the most part the OEM part means you get your support *from* the people you
bought it from (the hardware manufacturer I assume.) That's why it is less
expensive - the OEM has opted to provide support in order to lessen their
cost for the product and make more money off you (as they can sell more with
lower prices.) Right or wrong - it's fact.
I might suggest you look at these two web pages - they may have an
unattended method that will work more efficiently (not faster - imaging is
by far the fastest) for you...
http://unattended.msfn.org/
http://unattended.sourceforge.net/
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...1F-77AC-4400-A0C1-FE871C461A89&displaylang=en
In any case - glad you resolved your issue (for your sake) - while I don't
agree with who you seem to be blaming for your troubles, it is still good
you figured out what was going awry.
And before you start saying that I am defending Microsoft - there are many
things Microsoft sucks at - it is your particular complaint I am confused
by. ;-)
