Problem activating windows xp home

[MidnightFreak]

Hi there,

I am trying to fix a laptop that has windows xp home on it, and i got it to boot finally after numerous system files had to be replaced because they were either missing or corrupt. I have no clue what happened to it for it to be in this shape as it is not mine.

I had to use winternals adminpack5 to get the computer to boot up. It said that it had to fix some system files because they were corrupt. I also had to manually replace a couple of files in the system32 folder. Some .nls files i had never heard of before.

Now after the logon screen it tells me that i have to activate this copy of windows, should not be a problem cause this is an OEM license, but i click yes and it just proceeds to log me off. I never get a chance to activate it.

So i looked for the activation files and only found wpa.dbl. Wpa.bak was missing. And wpa.dbl is only like 2k, and i think it should be larger than that. So i renamed the file and booted up and this time it told me that there was a problem telling if the copy of windows was valid or not, and that i would have to re-activate. But it just logged me off again.

Does anyone know how i can either get it to the activation screen so i can take care of this or some other work around? I would really rather not re-install the OS after i spent a couple of hours working on this problem. Thanks.

 

[onetwenty8k]

What about trying a repair install after you boot into the Windows CD.

Take a look at this where it says "XP Repair install" (just a suggestion) http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

-Graham

 

[BIGDADDY51]

If it dropped or lost that many files, That's an indication that the harddrive may be on the way out the doorIt might be a good idea to wipe it clean ,and test it ,before reinstalling your os. . If you choose to do the repair, choose repair on the 2nd screen, and it pulls out the os without losing any other apps, and reinstalls it. If ypou are good at using the recovery console, choose the repair option, on the first page. That starts the recovery console, where you can repair the registery.Type in help, and it will bring up a list of what's available in the console. By selecting something out of the list, you get an idea of what each thing does. It mainly uses the same type of stuff that 98se had on its start up/help disc. Pretty neat and time saving, once you get used to it.