Comments on: Can’t activate Windows XP after a repair install or in-place upgrade

By: Peter Farmer

Peter Farmer — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:35:33 +0000

Many Many thanks for posting this tip . I wasnt able to login after being forced into a repair install which left me in the “activation required but doesnt work” loop. As you said IE 8 + SP3 in safe mode (no networkng) fixed the activation mechanism and I have a working machine once again after many frustrating hours. I switched to Linux & OS X many years ago . I just wish my clients would do the same !

By: ron

ron — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:39:36 +0000

Worked for me

By: Viktor

Viktor — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:19:32 +0000

Thanks Man, i owe you big time!

just wondering how did you figured out the sulotion???

By: Julien Lalande

Julien Lalande — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:17:16 +0000

Thank you sooooooooo much, works great!

By: Reggatta Mondatta

Reggatta Mondatta — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:13:35 +0000

Worked like a champ. Thanks much for the information.

It is pathetic that MS does not provide some type of warning/error message when attempting to activate without the required version of IE installed. I don’t even want to think about how much time I lost dealing with this.

By: Kat

Kat — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 04:41:31 +0000

THANK YOU!! You just saved my nerves and god knows how many innocent woodland creatures by my not having to pitch this thing outside into the dark!! Worked like a charm. Thanks so much!!

By: ron

ron — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:21:22 +0000

Awesome!! I was ready to go with the nuclear option till this gem of info. Thanks so much.

By: Jakers

Jakers — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 09:10:17 +0000

Thought I knew what I was doing and when the repair install on my niece’s laptop prevented me from activating, I tried just about everything: copied the wpa.bak and wpa.dbl files from an old Acronis image archive into the new install (while in “plain old safe mode” that took me hours to discover actually worked); called MS support – no comment; to all the other searching online and in notes. So I laughed when I read this solution, but when I checked, IE was version 6.0, so figured couldn’t hurt. Re-tried safe mode with networking, no luv there, so just restarted normally, got the same shit about activating before logon, clicked “yes”, walked away and came back to an actual activation box!

From there was just another minute to a fully activated XP SP3! Many, many thanks! Just a hair away from totally giving up…

By: elf

elf — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:02:56 +0000

thanks! it works!

By: DH

DH — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:42:32 +0000

Thank you, PEEEERFECT

Daniel