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XP Pro activation ??

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9 replies

by b_pope

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A friend purchased a new custom build PC with XP Pro installed about 5 weeks ago. He hadn't done the activation thing & landed himself in the hospital 4 days after getting the PC, he's coming home saturday & the 30 days is up & wants me to make sureit's ok as a result of not activating within the time period. He's off work for the next six months & not going to be to mobile & plans on spending all his time on the PC.......wish I could do that, oh well.

Anyway I've never come across this before, what's going to happen when I start this PC aside from the desktop not working & XP giving me some kind of crap about activating.

Will I need to reformat or will XP present some straight forward dialogues to get it running, Internet was neversetup, he'll being using dialup but I'm sure I'll be over within a week or two to install a nic card.

9 replies

by quintar51

If you pass the activation time, then you will need to reinstall XP. You can tell if you need to activate it if an icon of a pair of keys shows up at the bottom corner of your screen, where the time is. If that's there, that means you have a certain number of days to activate it. If it doesn't show up there, don't worry about it.

by thechas

You might try rolling back the clock in BIOS settings.
BEFORE THE FIRST BOOT!

That way, XP woun't know right away that it is past the activation date.

Chas

by b_pope

I thought about changing the date in bios, but didn't think it would work because of the added anti-piracy security features in XP. If I could think of it I was sure the blunderheads at MS would. I did enter the bios when I first booted the PC but ended up not touching the date settings, made some others changes thou. I might try it with a new system I'm building for myself since I won't care if I need to reformat, I'll post a new question to award you points if it works. See comments answer 3

by wcp

You can go ahead and boot the computer. Windows XP will ask you to activate. Just follow the instruction. If you do not activate, the Windows XP will shut off.

by b_pope

As you answered, when XP loaded it got to the welcome screen & a new dialogue box appeared stating I needed to activate along with another stating if I didn't activate XP wouldn't be able to continue.

Once I selected to activate XP it followed the normal activation routine with the option to activate over the Internet or via telephone. I choose the telephone it displayed my installation ID & the toll-free number & 5 minutes later it's all activated, no reformat needed.

Well with all the different answers I wasn't sure what to expect so I made a CD with all the XP drivers for his system, which I'm glad I didn't have to use. But will likely come in handy at some point.

by jlouis45

try giving the internet dialup information of anybody for temprorary and connect to the internet and activate ur winxp key. There is no other go in winxp. U neednt worry about anything as winxp will not work after 30 days the only option left will be format the PC and load Win98

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