Gah! XP activation issues.

[Dano]

Maybe somebody knows a way around this...

Broken pc running XP home, repair install was done and upon rebooting windows insists on activation before allowing any account to login. The activation applet fails for some reason (possibly needs network drivers or some remaining file corruption), fine, reboot into safe mode - same story, no login, safe mode with command prompt, explorer.exe into windows, cannot activate in safe mode :rolleye:

So I know a sysprep reseal will reset the activation grace period but it will not work as the sysprep tool fails to run due to compatability issues, something to do with the file and print sharing service needing to be active for it to work out what version of windows it's running, but I cannot run that in safe mode :rolleye:

Any ideas barring a full and clean install?

[Danno]

if it wont let you online it should give you an option show me other ways to activate and will give you information on activating windows over the phone.

[Dano]

The activation window is not appearing at all.

[Aegis]

Maybe somebody knows a way around this...

Broken pc running XP home, repair install was done and upon rebooting windows insists on activation before allowing any account to login. The activation applet fails for some reason (possibly needs network drivers or some remaining file corruption), fine, reboot into safe mode - same story, no login, safe mode with command prompt, explorer.exe into windows, cannot activate in safe mode :rolleye:

So I know a sysprep reseal will reset the activation grace period but it will not work as the sysprep tool fails to run due to compatability issues, something to do with the file and print sharing service needing to be active for it to work out what version of windows it's running, but I cannot run that in safe mode :rolleye:

Any ideas barring a full and clean install?

Hi Dano.

I had this problem not so long ago and i found either of the following solutions fixed it for me,

Cant activate windows after repair install,no activation window, no login,no safemode - MajorGeeks Support Forums (http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=190979)

Can’t activate Windows XP after a repair install or in-place upgrade – aaron-kelley.net (http://aaron-kelley.net/blog/2010/03/cant-activate-windows-xp-after-a-repair-install-or-in-place-upgrade/) .

On researching it....it seems it is to do with ie, and the fact that files that are needed are not always loaded they get scrambled sometimes during the repair.

I tend to just do a clean install now.

The tool they load should be called Windows Genuine Disadvatage.

Anyway hope this is of some help.

Regards

Aegis.

[Lee]

Maybe somebody knows a way around this...

Broken pc running XP home, repair install was done and upon rebooting windows insists on activation before allowing any account to login. The activation applet fails for some reason (possibly needs network drivers or some remaining file corruption), fine, reboot into safe mode - same story, no login, safe mode with command prompt, explorer.exe into windows, cannot activate in safe mode :rolleye:

So I know a sysprep reseal will reset the activation grace period but it will not work as the sysprep tool fails to run due to compatability issues, something to do with the file and print sharing service needing to be active for it to work out what version of windows it's running, but I cannot run that in safe mode :rolleye:

Any ideas barring a full and clean install?

does it have IE7 installed?

if it does uninstall it with

%windir%\ie7\spuninst\spuninst.exe

at the cmd prompt in safe mode

[Dano]

OK, problem solved.

Using an SP2 XP Home OEM disc I was able to run a repair install that allowed me to boot into Windows so I guess that SP3 was causing the 'must' activate issue. I then had to install IE7 for the system to successfully activate as the default IE6 supplied on the SP2 disc did not want to connect at all, once activated I re-installed SP3 and all updates without any further issues whatsoever.