Why can't I activate Windows XP?

I agree with J. Kap. And by the way, OEM and Retail products keys/media are not interchangeable. In other words, you cannot use a RETAIL XP disc and expect an OEM product key to work. That's just not the way it goes.

My laptop's motherboard died and I was informed by HP that I would have to pay $258 before they would send my an RMA as my Presario V6000 was out of warranty. I removed the hard drive and installed it in the new system that I decided to build. It has only that hard drive, a Zotac GF8100 C-E motherboard,AMD II x2 215 CPU,and 4GB of ram installed. No Internet,floppy,DVD,or CD yet.
I got the "Activation Required" screen.
The laptop did not come with a CD and the License Key on the laptop's sticker is apparently not good, (as per my attempted phone activation).
Any suggestions would be received thankfully.

Hi Leo, about the missing installation ID. After reading your story, it pop up in my mind why the number is missing. Since you had no Network card installed. Something was missing to finalise the equation that creates the installation ID number. The Installation ID Number is in fact the sum of all the hardware of the PC, which giving it a unique finger print for the activation combine with the Prod Key. That was originaly to prevent transfert of license number. And that way a Prod Key can not be used on two different PC. I'm suprised to see that even Microsoft forgot that security feature they created LOL And I think that it will only plague pre-SP1 version of XP. A friend ask me to solve the same problem today !

I need to activate my wondows Xp but the numbers for the South Africa call centre does not work. Who do I call now?

but what if when you click yes to activate windows xp notong shows up and just shows the background

Thank you for posting your adventure. I ran into exactly the same situation today. I was installing XP Pro to an Eeebox from USB HD. I followed your steps by installing drivers via Safe Mode, then activated over the Internet.

I do not know why this happened. I am quite sure that I have the correct media. All my years and I still can't say I've seen everything.

R.

Windows XP Profesional Edition has updated on my computer and now i can't log on as i do not know mu user name or password

Running into a similar issue. Confirmed that the network adapter drivers are properly instlled, but with the complication that my winsock/tcpip stack was corrupted. Have resolved this issue, but activation is still not completing. Oh the joys of repeated reboots!

Thanks for the well written story. The amount of time I spend on things I categorize under "stupid microsoft" is just way to long

I am having the same exact problem.
I am trying your advice now but not sure exactly what network drivers i need to find and install. I have Dell Inspirion E1705 with windows xp pro media edition.

Thank you!!!