{"id":735,"date":"2011-05-20T00:38:31","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T05:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/swildow.darktech.org\/wp\/?p=735"},"modified":"2011-05-20T00:38:31","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T05:38:31","slug":"can%e2%80%99t-activate-windows-xp-after-a-repair-install-or-in-place-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/?p=735","title":{"rendered":"Can\u2019t activate Windows XP after a repair install or in-place upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/aaron-kelley.net\/blog\/2010\/03\/cant-activate-windows-xp-after-a-repair-install-or-in-place-upgrade\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Can\u2019t activate Windows XP after a repair install or in-place upgrade<\/h2>\n
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010<\/div>\n
\n

Windows XP is a picky beast.\u00a0 If you want to move it from one system to another, chances are that you\u2019ll just get a BSOD upon boot.\u00a0 To get around this, you can do a repair install or \u201cin-place upgrade\u201d to convince it to take stock of all of the new hardware and then it will probably boot up fine.\u00a0 Of course, there\u2019s other reasons to run a repair install, it might be able to save a system that isn\u2019t working because of a strange configuration problem or a malware attack.<\/p>\n

Anyway, here\u2019s something that I\u2019ve run into a few times now:\u00a0 After running a repair install using a Windows XP SP3 disc, after booting up and logging in, you\u2019re given the message along the lines of: \u201cYou must activate Windows before you can log on.\u00a0 Would you like to activate Windows now?\u201d\u00a0 If you select \u201cYes,\u201d which is supposed to bring up the activation prompt, nothing happens.\u00a0 You get to stare at your desktop wallpaper until you decide to restart your computer manually.\u00a0 If you select \u201cNo,\u201d you are immediately logged out.\u00a0 What to do?<\/p>\n

Anyway, I discovered an easy solution to this problem today:\u00a0 Just boot the machine in safe mode and install Internet Explorer 8.\u00a0 (You\u2019ll need to download it from Microsoft\u2019s web site<\/a> and put it on a flash drive or something to move to the troubled machine.)\u00a0 After IE8 is installed, reboot again in normal mode and you should be able to activate.\u00a0 Note that you still may have to wait a minute or so for the activation window to appear after you click \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

This condition may be dependent on having IE8 (or 7?) installed before you attempt the repair install, and it somehow gets messed up during the install.<\/p>\n

Update: September 18, 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you are having trouble installing IE8, make sure that you have Windows XP Service Pack 3 installed.\u00a0 Some commenters below have reported trouble getting IE8 to install without an Internet connection to download the updates that it wants (since you are in safe mode) and without SP3.<\/p>\n

Update: May 11, 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you boot into safe mode and get a message that you need to activate Windows, make sure that you did not select Safe Mode with Networking<\/em>.\u00a0 You need to be in plain old Safe Mode<\/em> to be able to log in.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/aaron-kelley.net\/blog\/2010\/03\/cant-activate-windows-xp-after-a-repair-install-or-in-place-upgrade\/ Can\u2019t activate Windows XP after a repair install or in-place upgrade Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 Windows XP is a picky beast.\u00a0 If you want to move it from one system to another, chances are that you\u2019ll just get a … Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=735"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":737,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions\/737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wildow.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}