Boot problem and activation

[William B. Lurie]

I'm going to simplify my problem from the "FIXMBR" postings
of the past week, and restate it.

I made a Drive Image copy of my Master drive, in
which the XP I'm running right now resides. The Master
boots okay, but with 2 minor error messages which we just
ignore. They are caused by Drive Image files having been
condensed when XP did Disk Clean operation. No problem there.

The presumably exact copy, when run as a Master, should boot
like what it was copied from, but instead it gets to the
black XP logo screen with loading progress dots, and then
to the next Windows screen (light blue, just XP and logo)
and hangs there for several minutes, after which an
error panel comes up....
Windows Product Activation
A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking
the license for this computer. Error code OX80090006.

Obviously it has an activation problem. It's not a FIXMBR
problem because we're already booted into Windows XP.

I was told some time ago by one of the MVPs that it is no
violation of the EULA for me to have a backup copy of my
XP, to use in case my main drive dies. Well, folks, how do
I get past this activation problem?

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

Boot to safe mode (boot the system, start tapping F8, choose safe mode when
the menu appears) and activate in safe mode. It does need to be activated
but activation should be no problem as it is the same hardware.