Activation request

[Dennis Snelgrove]

I did the installation of Windows XP Home edition in January 2004 on
my PC. I've had no problems with it for going on 6 years now, but a
couple of weeks ago I booted the computer up and at the Users
selection screen it suddenly came up telling me that it had to be
activated before Windows would run. I haven't added any hardware or
made any major changes in at least 4 years. So I told it to activate,
waited while it sat there for almost 5 minutes, then it suddenly
closed itself down and restarted the PC again. At this point, it came
back to the User selection screen again and wanted me to activate it,
and the cycle repeats itself at this point. I installed the Windows XP
installation CD and chose Repair, but I really don't know what to do
at the command prompt. (I'm familiar with the prompt from the old DOS
days, but I have no idea what procedure to follow to effect a repair).
Should I simply choose to install Windows again, or will that
overwrite the registry and kill the set-up that is currently on there?

I have no idea what happened; the tower is mostly used as a back-up
server these days since my wife and I both got laptops and a wireless
router. Any insights or comments would really be appreciated.

 

[smlunatick]

I did the installation of Windows XP Home edition in January 2004 on
my PC. I've had no problems with it for going on 6 years now, but a
couple of weeks ago I booted the computer up and at the Users
selection screen it suddenly came up telling me that it had to be
activated before Windows would run. I haven't added any hardware or
made any major changes in at least 4 years. So I told it to activate,
waited while it sat there for almost 5 minutes, then it suddenly
closed itself down and restarted the PC again. At this point, it came
back to the User selection screen again and wanted me to activate it,
and the cycle repeats itself at this point. I installed the Windows XP
installation CD and chose Repair, but I really don't know what to do
at the command prompt. (I'm familiar with the prompt from the old DOS
days, but I have no idea what procedure to follow to effect a repair).
Should I simply choose to install Windows again, or will that
overwrite the registry and kill the set-up that is currently on there?

I have no idea what happened; the tower is mostly used as a back-up
server these days since my wife and I both got laptops and a wireless
router. Any insights or comments would really be appreciated.

Some drivers and firmware updates can trigger the "Activation"
process. If you can, try to follow the activate by telephone process.

As for the repair process, if you have IE 7 / 8 and Windows Media
Player 11installed, these need to be "uninstalled" / "rolled back"
before you do the repair reinstall.

Also, you need to have the XP install CD, not a system recovery CD,
that also has the exact same level of Service Pack "pre-applied" on
the disk, as the one installed on your PC.