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Friday 10 December 2004

WinXP Activation [beej]

  1. Took XP CD home from work and installed it (how many people do this? Faaasands!)
  2. XP tries to activate, but as its already been done at work, it fails. You get 30-days for free, with the balloon reminder each login.
  3. I accidentally let the 30-day 'grace period' expire. At this point, its too late to enter another product key as documented on many forums. It won't have it at all. So you can't login at all... it logs you straight back out...only... you can by choosing 'register online', then opening a hyperlink in the activation app, which kicks in IE and of course that's complete access to your PC.
  4. After a week or so this is a real PITA (you've no Desktop, Task bar, or Start menu) so I called the Microsoft Activation Line to test the water on what sort of details they'd ask from me in order to get a code out of them.
  5. You key in the installation id from the reg app over the phone. The computer doesn't like this, so passes you on to a human being. She then asks for the first 6 digits again... after which she reads out the code to activate XP! Sorted!
  6. And I didn't even say my name or address. Whoah! Obviously the XP activation stuff isn't as sinister as the raving loony leftie lunix crowd make out.

3 comments:

  1. I think that's meant to scare of thieving bar stewards. Quite likely it would, how many pimply warez monkeys would consider picking up the phone?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Odd, we have a volume code that we use over and over, thought your place would have too?

    ReplyDelete
  3. On a similar topic, this URL has information on how to change XP's product activation code, if you're using a blacklisted corp key that won't let you upgrade to SP1.
    www.labmice.net

    ReplyDelete