Stupid Windows Activation

[MYstIC G]

Need help chaps as google churns up nothing but shit these days when you type in a tech question (pay $5 to see the answer my ass).

My lass has a laptop. It was full of spyware nasties.

I used the AV program to nuke said nasties except this was a smart nasty and it broke her XP install so it then wouldn't boot.

Needless to say after much "I'm bored of this" I reinstalled XP.

The problem is now that I forgot to activate the fucker, now it won't let anyone login to do anything and whenever I click the "next" button in the activation wizard (either internet or telephone) fuck all happens (it just loops).

Anyone know if there are any magic bypasses as I don't fancy reinstalling again yet because I've a feeling that the reinstall didn't fix everything broken by the nasties and that if I reinstall I'll just end up back at square one.

Cheers

 

[Bob007]

Most of them "pay to see the answer" sites just require you to scroll down to the bottom to find the answers.

If you can gain access to the system via safe mode. you could try sysprep from the deploy.cab on the XP cd. This has an option to reset the grace period for XP but it also does a lot more. Read before comitting to it. Might be a way to go but depends on gaining access to the system.

KB on sysprep

 

[Bob007]

Damn sure that wasn't 10 mins....


This should give you limited access to the system. With a bit of copy, paste and tweaking of file names: Explorer.exe to explorer1.exe, cmd.exe to cmd1.exe, you should get as much access as you need to "get round" the activation for now. Once you have full access with task bar you can work on a more perma repair and fix.

 

[Ctuchik]

Anyone know if there are any magic bypasses as I don't fancy reinstalling again yet because I've a feeling that the reinstall didn't fix everything broken by the nasties and that if I reinstall I'll just end up back at square one.

Cheers

call microsoft. their support are actually quite decent (atleast in sweden) and fucking around with hacks or other dodgy stuff probably wont help you if you DO end up having to call them.

trust me, microsoft support is the way to go.

 

[MYstIC G]

Well I was going ring M$ until their website asked me for a card and £46.

I think the sysprep thing seems a little hardcore, I just want to figure out why it won't connect and activate so I'll start with the explorer thing and see what happens!

 

[Ch3tan]

It's quicker to simple reinstall and activate during the install.

 

[Trem]

It's quicker to simple reinstall and activate during the install.

What ch3t said.

Next time you get said nasty just remove and replace the ram you cabbage

Your mrs must realise now that you are a numpty, I imagine she is hankering after a strong northern man like......oh I dunno....me maybe.