activator.exe?

[Brian Geer]

I have a PC running WinXP Pro that will not boot
correctly. I get past the login screen and it hangs,
when I do a CTRL+ALT+DEL and stop a process called
activator.exe the PC then continues to boot fine. When I
do a run MSCONFIG and goto the startup tab I see three
instances that reference activator.exe. Can anyone tell
me how to remove those references or if anyone knows what
the activator.exe is for and should I not remove the
refernces.

Thank you in advance for any assistance.

Brian W. Geer

 

[Scott Scothorn]

I have the exact same problem, would appreciate any help
from someone who has solved this.

 

[Scott Scothorn]

This one took me a while to figure out, I had the same
problem. activator.exe isn't as it seems. The o is
really a zero,activat0r.exe but you can't tell when
viewing from the processes. I figured it out using
norton process viewer. What I did was first go
into the \windows\system32 directory and rename the file
activat0r.exe(deleting would work too) to a different
extension. Then
I searched the entire registry and deleted all keys that
had the word
activat0r in them. Rebooted and xp boots up fine now and
the process is no longer running.