Reactivate Windows???

[nooneimportant]

Have a homebuilt system that i completed in January, installed XPpro on it,
ran flawlessly since. The other day i tried to install simcity4rushour, got
all kinds of errors, someone on the alt.games.simcity group suggested trying
to install from safe mode, got same series of errors, but what REALLY got me
was that i had a dialog box popup between the logon screen and desktop
stating that my machine has "Had significant hardware changes" and "Must be
reactivated, Reactivate now? [YES][NO]! Now what bothers me is that there
has BEEN ABSOLUTELY ZERO HARDWARE CHANGE SINCE INSTALLATION! So i figured
it may be something to do with safemode... so i rebooted into standard....
message persists, i have that set of keys in the taskbar reminding me to
activate, and that i have only 3 days left. I have no problem reactivating
it, but what bothers me is that somehow it decided i had a change in the
system. Any ideas on what is causing this, and if i should go ahead and
reactivate or find another solution?? (BTW both copies of winXP are 100%
legal, have product keys, and have used flawlessly on this machine and
laptop (both activated using diff keys))

 

[nooneimportant]

Have a homebuilt system that i completed in January, installed XPpro on it,
ran flawlessly since. The other day i tried to install simcity4rushour, got
all kinds of errors, someone on the alt.games.simcity group suggested trying
to install from safe mode, got same series of errors, but what REALLY got me
was that i had a dialog box popup between the logon screen and desktop
stating that my machine has "Had significant hardware changes" and "Must be
reactivated, Reactivate now? [YES][NO]! Now what bothers me is that there
has BEEN ABSOLUTELY ZERO HARDWARE CHANGE SINCE INSTALLATION! So i figured
it may be something to do with safemode... so i rebooted into standard....
message persists, i have that set of keys in the taskbar reminding me to
activate, and that i have only 3 days left. I have no problem reactivating
it, but what bothers me is that somehow it decided i had a change in the
system. Any ideas on what is causing this, and if i should go ahead and
reactivate or find another solution?? (BTW both copies of winXP are 100%
legal, have product keys, and have used flawlessly on this machine and
laptop (both activated using diff keys))

Let me add that i have NOT installed SP2.

 

[JAD]

what is stopping you from reactivating? Seems that you should talk to
a human at MS and tell them what happened. Ask them WHY this happens
and how often? let us know what they say.

 

[)-()-(]

Have a homebuilt system that i completed in January, installed XPpro on it,
ran flawlessly since. The other day i tried to install simcity4rushour, got
all kinds of errors, someone on the alt.games.simcity group suggested trying
to install from safe mode, got same series of errors, but what REALLY got me
was that i had a dialog box popup between the logon screen and desktop
stating that my machine has "Had significant hardware changes" and "Must be
reactivated, Reactivate now? [YES][NO]! Now what bothers me is that there
has BEEN ABSOLUTELY ZERO HARDWARE CHANGE SINCE INSTALLATION! So i figured
it may be something to do with safemode... so i rebooted into standard....
message persists, i have that set of keys in the taskbar reminding me to
activate, and that i have only 3 days left. I have no problem reactivating
it, but what bothers me is that somehow it decided i had a change in the
system. Any ideas on what is causing this, and if i should go ahead and
reactivate or find another solution?? (BTW both copies of winXP are 100%
legal, have product keys, and have used flawlessly on this machine and
laptop (both activated using diff keys))

You should look into Drive Image Software after you resolve this
and do periodic backups, preferably on a spare external drive or
at least on a spare partition. Best thing I did with my homebuilt.