activation problems

[bmorrison]

Problem: We are getting a warning that we have x number of
days to activate Windows XP but we can not locate the
activation window. We have logged on as the administrator
and gone to start/accessories/ there is no activation
wizard link here.

History: We are a public library with 21 public machines.
Professional XP was loaded on the machines by Dell. We
created an image of one machine and used it to deploy the
other 20. Unfortunately we did not run sysprep prior to
imaging. Everything has been fine but now we are getting
ready to migrate from an NT4 domain to a server 2003
domain and we needed to change the SIDs on the XP
workstations. We decided to run sysprep on the XP
machines. All is well except with the activation. On some
machines the activation wizard has popped up and we have
successfully activated the machines. On other machines we
never see the wizard, the link is not in the
start/accessories menu and we are getting the warning that
we have a limited number of days to activate. Any help
will be appreciated.

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

Try the following from Start>Run to see the status of Activation:

C:\Windows\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /A

 

[Guest]

Go to update on microsoft this will tell you if there is a problem. If an
activation window isn't coming up there might be a problem with the keycode.
Best hurry before the machine goes down. You can match the reg no with the
keycode to make sure it was activated properly.