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XP Activation Monkey Business.

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by jardinier

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I think this question is more suited to a general discussion than a technical one.
A former elderly client named Arthur, rang me two days ago in a state of distress. While he had been in hospital having surgery, his daughter had for no apparent reason completely reorganised the furniture in his small retirement unit, including disconnecting his computer and using the computer desk for the TV.
Arthur could not remember the name or contact details of the technician he had been using, and asked if I would connect up his computer again. Well I knew that, since he has passed out of my care, his new technician had installed ADSL with an ISP called flow.com, and a mail server called mail.com

What I didn't know was that Arthur had bought a new TV, with XP Home Edition installed. So I connected everything up, and turned on the computer, to be greeted by a log-in screen. The next screen asked if I wanted to register XP or activate it. So I chose activate. This had to be done online and with Arthur's mind a blank he couldn't help me with password, username etc. So XP invited me to shut down the computer. Now obviously XP had been registered initially, so why did it demand to be reactivated? I am guessing that Microsoft has some kinky rule such as, if you don't use the computer for a certain period, you have to reactivate XP to prove you are the original purchaser. Any answers please?

2 replies

by mallardtooxx

Jul,
It is possible that the inital registration of XP was not completed or was skipped. If the box was not activated correctly or if you do not have the registration code it will give you the wonderful you are not a registered user error. My advice would be to drop XP home completely and get him a copy of XP Pro and start over. Just wait until you get the great unmountable boot disk error!@*&^%!

-duck

by jardinier

Thanks for your information and suggestion, Duck. Personally I am seriously considering that when the time comes that XP is the oldest version of Windows that is supported, I will switch to Mac and OS X (or whatever version is reached by then).

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