My friend you are a genius, so simple and it works like a dream! Thank you!!
[quote name=\'shaney3181\' post=\'278459\' date=\'Jan 26 2007, 01:35 PM\']A friend of mine recently got a very bad virus on her computer and the entire drive needed a partition. She has a gateway, but could not find her operating system disk to reinstall windows xp. She used my OEM cd from gateway to reinstall windows xp on her computer, but immediantly got the "Activation Required" notification. I tried using her Key to activate but it wouldn't work. After many long hours of searching, we came across this little trick, and it worked for her! Not sure if it will work on anything besides XP, but can't hurt to try it!! Good Luck..........
To Activate Windows XP without key code........
Go To Start- Run- Type in regedit
Go to Hkey Local Machine and click the +
Software click +
Microsoft click +
Windows NT click +
Current Version click +
WPA Events
On the right, there should be something that says "oobetimer", right click and hit modify
Delete the letter/number code and replace with this.......
FF D5 71 D6 8B 6A 8D 6F D5 33 93 FD then click OK
Quickly (you only have a few seconds before the system will change the number code back) go back to WPA Events on left, Right click on permissions
Highlight the user SYSTEM and put a check under DENY for everthing
Click Apply, then OK to everything.
Restart your computer
Check to make sure you are activated
Go to Start, Run, Type in %systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe \a
click ok
If you did everything right, you should get a message that says, "Windows is already activated"
And yes, after this, I was able to install Windows Updates on her computer and it even passed the "Genuine Windows Validation Tool"
From what I understand, the code that is being changed is the same on EVERY computer once Windows XP has been activated. Anyways, Good Luck:)[/quote]