XP Activation

[ColaBoy]

[teststrips]

XP can be activated automatically over the internet only so many times. It will eventually force you to call an 800 number to microsoft and wait through a queue to talk to a microsoft agent. They'll ask you questions of why you've needed to re-activate. Its no big deal, but it will take a few minutes of your time to talk to MS.

[Ranger Bob]

Does anyone have this phone number. I have a copy of Windows XP Pro I want to move to another PC from one that got destroyed by lighting last summer.

[ColaBoy]

Maybe you could try ringing MicroSoft Customer Services,its worth a shot.

[Geekgirl]

Here's an interesting article... at least I thought so

[Ranger Bob]

That is a good link. I had in fact already seen it and made a copy of it but had failed to see the 120 days. If I read this correctly since my old version that was on the PC that got hit by lighting last July has been over 120 days I should not have any problem activating with the code that comes with install CD.

[Cactus]

There is another way....

Can I avoid reactivation if I format my hard disk and reinstall or do a repair installation?

Yes. There are several things you can do.

If you are going to do a repair installation, there are two files named WPA.DBL and WPA.BAK. They are stored in the Windows\System32 directory. You can back these up, perform the repair installation of XP then put these two files back into the Windows\System32 directory. If all you have done is a repair installation, XP will be none the wiser. This procedure is said to work on a clean installation, but others categorically state this to be false.

The Hard Drive Volume Serial Number is stored on the first sector of a partition. If you format your boot partition for any reason, or convert from FAT/FAT32 to NTFS, the Hard Drive Volume Serial Number will change. Before you format, go to a command prompt and issue the Windows XP VOL command. You will get a response similar to the following:

Volume in drive C is Local Disk

Volume Serial Number is 30ED-49F9

In the above example, 30ED-49F9 is the volume serial number, or VSN. Record it. To restore the VSN, download the volumeid.exe from sysinternals.com
( http://sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/mi ... l#VolumeId ) and run it. Just give the small executable the old volume ID and you're done. You will need to reboot if you have NTFS.

Performing the above step is not critical, but it does preserve a yes vote. It may come in handy if you want to avoid reactivation and you have calculated from the information above that reactivation will be required because of one additional component change.

Finally, if you change your hard drive and reinstall XP to a different partion, you will lose two yes votes. You can preserve one yes vote by using the technique described above, but if you use imaging software, such as PowerQuest Drive Image 2002, you can retain both yes votes by imaging the drive, and either restoring XP to its original location or to a new location and retaining the old hard disk as a backup. If you format the old disk, it will lose its VSN and so you will lose a yes vote. This technique works because because WPA checks all drives and partitions for the VSN it is looking for.

Cactus