Can't activate XP Pro

[John]

I recently had a hard disk failure. I was able to recover from a backup,
but was unable to login. When tried to login, I was immediately logged
off, and returned to a login prompt. I repaired the install with a
slpistreamed SP3 install disk. Now the I login, I get a message that says I
need to activate. When I click to activate, I'm logged off. HELP!

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I recently had a hard disk failure. I was able to recover from a
backup, but was unable to login. When tried to login, I was
immediately logged off, and returned to a login prompt. I repaired
the install with a slpistreamed SP3 install disk. Now the I login,
I get a message that says I need to activate. When I click to
activate, I'm logged off. HELP!

Sounds like you did not fix anything and may still be infested/infected with
whatever originally caused the issue.

 

[John]

I booted from a CD, and scanned the system and found nothing. Any idea what
to do next?

 

[John]

I worked it out. When I reloaded the bachine, the boot disk became F:
instead of C:. The usrinnit key in the registry was looking for the
usrinit.exe on the C drive which didn't exist.