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Activation needed?

By blanchrt ·
Trying to go one step further in improving my PC's performance, some days ago I made the following changes in the Registry:
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1 - For faster opening of most used programs:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management:
LargeSystemCache - Set to 1 (default = 0)

2 - To clear the Swap File on shutdown:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management:
ClearPageFileAtShutdown - Set to 1 (default = 0)
(The idea on this particular change was to let it be applied once so that pagefile.sys didn't keep growing beyond its 1.6 Gb -despite the system would create it again at startup with no less than 700Mb, but anyway, with a lot less clutter- and then revert immediately the value to 0, since leaving it enabled increases significantly the shutdown and startup times).
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I did one thing wrong: I didn't take care to make one change at a time, reboot, see what happened and then make the other one (and reboot), but made them both at a time and rebooted, so that I can't tell which (if any) caused me the problem I describe next:

As I have said, I made the two changes to the Registry and when I rebooted, was unable to start Windows, because it "needed to be activated". At first I hit "Cancel", but it freezed and didn't logon, so I tried with "OK" and nothing happened, whatever the startup mode I used: all the available safe modes, last known good config, etc.

The question is:
Can anybody confirm that these changes (related to Memory management) have something to do with Win XP losing its former Activation status?

Thanks a lot

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by HAL 9000 Moderator In reply to Activation needed?

Well provided they where the exact changes made with no typos it should be working. Since your now stuck between a rock and a hard place the easy answer is to remove the HDD fit it to another computer as a Slave and edit the registry from the other computer.

If there are no typos reset things back to their default values and try again to see if it will boot. Because XP has some funny ideas about hardware changes you may be required to reactivate the product again but use the telephone option and not the auto activation option over the Internet it is slower and painful but it really works out faster in the long run. Just a trick that I've picked up here if you want to speak to a person and not a computer do not enter in the code when asked just keep pushing the 1 button till you hear I can sense you are having problems press 1 to speak to an operator. It is really much faster.

Col

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by Sue T In reply to Activation needed?

Have you tried doing a system restore to a time before you made these changes?

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by blanchrt In reply to Activation needed?

Well, in fact, after a lot of retries, I could manage to make the Activation (phone option), what I intended to avoid.

But what I was asking is whether those Memory Management changes could credibly bring about the loss of the Activation data.
(HAL 9000: No typos: I got to either key "going down" the tree inside Regedit).

Perhaps something went away with the deleted pagefile.sys? Unlikely... I understand Activation data reside in wpa.dbl/wpa.bak, which I could not restore, since I wasn't able to logon to Windows.
(Sue T: for the same reason I couldn't even consider a System Restore).

Thanks for your answers.

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by oliver_ricken In reply to Activation needed?

HI,
WHEN U MAKE CHANGES TO XP IT (MOSTLY HARDWARE CHANGES)ASK FOR ACTIVATION AGAIN FOR SAFTY TO PREVENT PIRACY. YES RELATED MANAGEMENT HAVE TO DO SOMETHING WITH XP LOSING ACTIVATON. SO E-MAIL ME AT oliver_ricken@hotmail.com and i will help u. I can give u a activation patch illegal.

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