Activate XP

I put a new hard drive in swmbo's computer and installed xp (2002)

I haven't got the network working properly yet but connects to the internet.

When I try to activate xp I get a message "incorrect product key"

What can I do?

Pay for it?

Hi Bob,

If you believe that you have a ligitimate copy of the product, try using activate over the 'phone and explain you situation to the MS call centre operator - they are generally quite helpful.

If however you have a pirated copy that you acquired in all honesty from a 3rd party, you may have a problem that will only be resolved by spending some $. If so, I'd be looking to seek some redress from that 3rd party...

What Steve said.

its not a pirate copy, had it for a coupla years but hadn't installed it earlier

Same happened to me, i got it part of the MS action pack and came with 10 user licences. On the first install i got told that and rang up, the guy in india told me it was a pirate copy, i explained to him its a gunuine MS CD and have 10 licences for it. he put me on hold for about 10 mins then asked me to read the 20 digit code to him and he gave me the activation codes.

Bob,
it could be that MS's auto system will only recognise codes from XP Service Pack 2. I think 2002 predates SP2.
You'll almost certainly want to load SP2 anyway, so see if MS will swap the disk

ian

I've had it unopened for a couple of years so exchanging it might not be on.

I bought 2 original copies of xp with major hardware.

Set mine up with xp & swmbo's with me, thinking I'd put xp on hers if it wasn't buggy on mine. Just never got around to xp on hers until I put a big hard drive in.

Bob, have you tried activating it over the phone rather than on the net?


Cheers...............Sean

I just activated it over the phone, easy enough
Apparently if you change hardware you have to activate it again, bummer.
I put the old hard drive in as a slave so I could transfer all the files easy.
When that's done I was going to put the old drive in mine as a slave.
So I'll have to activate both computers again in the next coupla days.

Wonder what happens when the next generation o/s comes available, will we be able activate xp some other way?

Quote:

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So I'll have to activate both computers again in the next coupla days.

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Slaving up a 2nd disk shouldn't force a re-activation.

Making a major hardware change, like system board usually will.

I believe the security looks at several things in your system, Hard disk, CPU, lan card, video card etc. If only one or 2 change it will still be happy. But if enough parts are swapped it will want to re-activate.

If you reload windows onto a new hard disk (after a crash for example) it will usually re-activate with no problem if all the hardware remains the same. But upgrading a system board sometimes results in a phone call to some foreign helpdesk. Have allways been able to activate the machines OK eventually though.

Cheers

Ian