Repair Install and Product Activation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim Nugent
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J

Jim Nugent

Last night I had to do a repair install on my daughter's laptop (She had
tried to install the Sun Java Runtime while Automatic Updates was in the
middle of installing this month's critical hot-fixes), resulting in a
unbootable system.

As advised I had carefully preserved copies of the wpa.dbl and wpa.bak files
to avoid reactivation issues. To my surprise, I wasn't asked to activate. Is
this expected behavior for a repair install? Since it didn't ask for
activation, I didn't replace the wpa.* files. The system has been restarted
several times and not a peep out of it WRT activation. Am I "out of the
woods?"
 
On a regular repair install (or an upgrade install on top of an existing,
already activated install) this is to be expected, because the licensing is
still valid for the same hardware configuration.
It will replace missing and/or corrupted installation files from the install
media, but won't touch the activation data.
(At least that has been my experience so far.)

george
 
Jim Nugent said:
Last night I had to do a repair install on my daughter's laptop (She had
tried to install the Sun Java Runtime while Automatic Updates was in the
middle of installing this month's critical hot-fixes), resulting in a
unbootable system.

As advised I had carefully preserved copies of the wpa.dbl and wpa.bak
files
to avoid reactivation issues. To my surprise, I wasn't asked to activate.
Is
this expected behavior for a repair install? Since it didn't ask for
activation, I didn't replace the wpa.* files. The system has been
restarted
several times and not a peep out of it WRT activation. Am I "out of the
woods?"
Click to expand...

I think you're more worried about activation than you need to be. If the
timing's right, you can activate over the internet; if that gets refused,
you make the phone call (toll-free in the US) and get to read numbers to the
automated system, then type in some numbers, and that's it. Worst case, you
get to talk to a human, and when that happens to me I figure that I've got
to spend five minutes on the call, where for the person on the other end,
it's their job, and how boring must that be?

It's not like the ask for a DNA sample or give you an IQ test. You probably
spent more time fiddling with the files than it would have taken to do the
reactivation.
 
I think you're more worried about activation than you need to be. If the
timing's right, you can activate over the internet; if that gets refused,
you make the phone call (toll-free in the US) and get to read numbers to the
automated system, then type in some numbers, and that's it. Worst case, you
get to talk to a human, and when that happens to me I figure that I've got
to spend five minutes on the call, where for the person on the other end,
it's their job, and how boring must that be?
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reassuring reply. I see you point. I suspect the article I
found was old, written when WPA was new and folks were more paranoid about
it. The (non MS) article talked about avoiding using one of it's "lives."
Are they limited?
It's not like the ask for a DNA sample or give you an IQ test. You probably
spent more time fiddling with the files than it would have taken to do the
reactivation.
Click to expand...

In this case, no, because all I did was copy the wpa.* files out to the c:\
root directory.
Her laptop has no floppy --- instead it has a ... get this ... Weight Saver
Module" --- and I was in the recovery console anyway to look for the
Undo_guimode.txt per KB 312368 to avoid losing the All Users and .default
settings. I never needed the WPA files; apparently this type of reinstall
doesn't touch them.

Question: Can you write from the Recover Console to a USB stick?

My daughter had called me in hysterics. It was one of VERY few times I've
had to reinstall to fix a problem. I'd had no XPerience with anything other
than "out of the box" activation. I was aware of the layers of contingencies
to get it resolved.

I got home at 8:30, tried some more conservative approaches, looked up the
stop code (21a in Winlogon.exe) and was advised to do a "Repair Install."

As it turned out I'd "brought 'Er back alive," including the repair install
and 12 MS hotfixes and upgrading the Sun Java runtime to 1.5 by about
11:00PM. And with no data loss that we've found yet.

Thanks again,
 
Jim said:
Last night I had to do a repair install on my daughter's laptop (She had
tried to install the Sun Java Runtime while Automatic Updates was in the
middle of installing this month's critical hot-fixes), resulting in a
unbootable system.

As advised I had carefully preserved copies of the wpa.dbl and wpa.bak files
to avoid reactivation issues. To my surprise, I wasn't asked to activate. Is
this expected behavior for a repair install? Since it didn't ask for
activation, I didn't replace the wpa.* files. The system has been restarted
several times and not a peep out of it WRT activation. Am I "out of the
woods?"
Click to expand...


If you used the BIOS-locked OEM installation CD that was originally
provided with the laptop, there should have been no need to activate.

(By the way, preserving the WPA.* files would have been of very little
use to you, had activation been required. That much bally-hooed
technique only works under very limited circumstances.)


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH
 
Jim said:
I suspect the article I
found was old, written when WPA was new and folks were more paranoid about
it. The (non MS) article talked about avoiding using one of it's "lives."
Are they limited?
Click to expand...


There's no limit to the number of times you can reinstall and
activate the same WinXP license on the same PC. Nor is there ever a
charge. Nor does a Product Key (so long as it's not an evaluation
license) ever expire. If it's been more than 120 days since you last
activated that specific Product Key, you'll most likely be able to
activate via the Internet without problem. If it's been less, you
might have to make a 5 minute phone call.

Here are the facts pertaining to activation:

Piracy Basics - Microsoft Product Activation
http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/basics/activation/

Windows Product Activation (WPA)
http://www.aumha.org/a/wpa.htm



Question: Can you write from the Recover Console to a USB stick?
Click to expand...


Unlikely. WinXP would need to be fully loaded in order to enable the
USB device drivers. However, check with the laptop's manufacturer -
perhaps the laptop's BIOS has been designed to provide access to
external USB storage devices without the need for additional drivers.





--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH
 
First, thanks to you and everyone who responded. I feel a lot more
comfortable with WPA than I did before. That laptop was our first XP
machine. The others are 2000 Pro boxes.
If you used the BIOS-locked OEM installation CD that was originally
provided with the laptop, there should have been no need to activate.
Click to expand...

ISTR having one of those "out of box experiences" :-) when we first booted
it. I remember having to enter the product key because the sticker was on
the BOTTOM of the computer. I think I had to activate it. That's the way an
OEM pre-install is supposed to work, isn't it?
(By the way, preserving the WPA.* files would have been of very little
use to you, had activation been required. That much bally-hooed
technique only works under very limited circumstances.)
Click to expand...

Not to be flip, Bruce, but I got that idea from an article you cited in this
thread:

http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

"HINT No. 3: It is valuable to back up the two files WPA.DBL and WPA.BAK
from the Windows\System32 folder.Then, should they get damaged, or should
you do a 'Repair' reinstallation of Win XP, these files can be copied back
to restore the prior activation status. However, this only works in those
limited circumstances. "

What I found interesting was that a 'Repair' installation was exactly what I
did, and Windows never said "boo" about activation. The article above
implies that reactivation would have been required for a Repair install.
Perhaps that has changed?

I later checked and found that %Systemroot%\WPA.DBL had been written to, but
never deleted during the operation because it had the same creation date as
before. Both files also had the same MD5 hash values as my "backup" copies,
which I never needed to use.
 
Colin Barnhorst said:
Having to enter the product key and having to activate are not related.
Click to expand...
ISTR having one of those "out of box experiences" :-) when we first booted
it. I remember having to enter the product key because the sticker was on
the BOTTOM of the computer. I think I had to activate it. That's the way an
OEM pre-install is supposed to work, isn't it?
Click to expand...

Perhaps I should have been clearer: AFTER Entering the product key, I think
I had to activate Windows XP.
 
In
Jim Nugent said:
First, thanks to you and everyone who responded. I feel a lot more
comfortable with WPA than I did before. That laptop was our first XP
machine. The others are 2000 Pro boxes.


ISTR having one of those "out of box experiences" :-) when we first
booted it. I remember having to enter the product key because the
sticker was on the BOTTOM of the computer. I think I had to activate
it. That's the way an OEM pre-install is supposed to work, isn't it?


Not to be flip, Bruce, but I got that idea from an article you cited
in this thread:

http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

"HINT No. 3: It is valuable to back up the two files WPA.DBL and
WPA.BAK from the Windows\System32 folder.Then, should they get
damaged, or should you do a 'Repair' reinstallation of Win XP, these
files can be copied back to restore the prior activation status.
However, this only works in those limited circumstances. "

What I found interesting was that a 'Repair' installation was exactly
what I did, and Windows never said "boo" about activation. The
article above implies that reactivation would have been required for
a Repair install. Perhaps that has changed?

I later checked and found that %Systemroot%\WPA.DBL had been written
to, but never deleted during the operation because it had the same
creation date as before. Both files also had the same MD5 hash values
as my "backup" copies, which I never needed to use.
Click to expand...

What is the manufacturer of the computer? If it is a major OEM and they
supplied you with the OEM XP CD, it is most likely BIOS locked and would not
require activation when used to repair install on the original computer. If
the BIOS is flashed to an unauthorized update, or the branded OEM BIOS
locked CD is used on a different make computer it will need to be activated.
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm
 
What is the manufacturer of the computer?
Click to expand...

Milwaukee PC, Inc.
If it is a major OEM and they
supplied you with the OEM XP CD, it is most likely BIOS locked and would not
require activation when used to repair install on the original computer. If
the BIOS is flashed to an unauthorized update, or the branded OEM BIOS
locked CD is used on a different make computer it will need to be
Click to expand...
activated.

So you are saying that a BIOS locked CD will simply want to be activated if
installed on a different computer --- it would not just puke?

The question is moot now, but it sounds like if I try to install this copy
of XP into one of my MCSE training partitions on my (different) computer, it
would want to be activated if it were a plain vanilla OEM CD, and it would
want to be activated if it were BIOS locked to the laptop it came with, so I
still couldn't tell.
 
Jim Nugent said:
Milwaukee PC, Inc.

activated.

So you are saying that a BIOS locked CD will simply want to be activated
if
installed on a different computer --- it would not just puke?

The question is moot now, but it sounds like if I try to install this copy
of XP into one of my MCSE training partitions on my (different) computer,
it
would want to be activated if it were a plain vanilla OEM CD, and it would
want to be activated if it were BIOS locked to the laptop it came with, so
I
still couldn't tell.
Click to expand...

which is one of the reasons I like using VPC so much
:-))

george
 
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