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Summary: I tried to activate Windows XP Home and it didn't work. Thus began a phone saga with Microsoft support, ending in failure. Until I fixed it myself.
That question wasn't posed by just any reader. This time it was me. And after an hour and a half on the phone, I was no further along. And yet, left to my own devices I had the machine activated in about 10 minutes. This is not good. Not at all. In fact, it's downright depressing. • First, the background. I have a Dell Latitude 131L that's perhaps two years old. It came with Windows XP Home pre-loaded from Dell. I'd loaned the machine to a friend for a while who'd recently returned it. I used it as a testbed and installed Ubuntu Linux on it, played with it for a bit, and then left it to sit in a corner. Today I decided that this was the machine to use for a new employee at my wife's business. So, time to reformat and reinstall. Now, here is the only confusing factor: the machine is a Dell, and came with Dells OEM version of Windows XP Home pre-installed. The product key for XP Home that was installed on it is on a sticker on the bottom of the laptop. Like so many of my readers I'd lost, misplaced, or just didn't feel like looking for the actual Dell Windows XP Home disk, particularly since I had a old pre-SP1 retail disk (purchased from the Microsoft Company Store) in front of me that I'd never used. The product key for one CD of Windows XP Home should work with any other - remember, it's the product key you're purchasing, not just a CD. If not, I expected it would at least generate an error when I entered it. So when I installed Windows I entered the original Dell product key, even though I was installing a retail copy of XP Home. The thing is, it worked. Or at least it seemed to. Windows Setup dutifully accepted the product key, reformatted the entire hard drive as I requested and copied over files from the CD. It just generally seemed to be working, and working well. "I'm sure that most of the time it works. But ... Oh.
My. God."
Until it rebooted and hung. (Still no idea what that was about.) I removed the CD, and hard-booted the machine, and sure enough, Windows came up except that it presented me with a message I'd never seen before, and didn't even know existed: "You must first activate this copy of Windows before you can log in". This was new. In my experience Windows will normally allow you to login and complete your set up without activating, giving you 30 days to get around to that. OK, whatever, I decided to activate. The choices came up, I plugged in a network cable and told the Windows to activate itself over the net. No. The network card hadn't been configured yet, there was no external connectivity available. The only option was to activate Windows over the phone. I hesitated, but having advised so many people in the past that phone activation is no big deal, I decided to live by my own words, and picked up the phone. I'm sure that most of the time it works. But ... Oh. My. God. Here's the highly edited sequence:
At this point I'm about 45 minutes into it and probably would have given up had I not begun envisioning this article resulting from my experience. Any normal person would have throw up their hands at this point, I'm certain. I persevered.
To their credit everyone I talked to was polite and honestly intent on getting whatever issue was in front of them resolved. (I, too, took pains to remain calm and friendly throughout. Tempting as it is, anger rarely helps.) And I also have to point out that I totally get that remote debugging is incredibly difficult. I know, I try to do it every day answering questions here. It's hard. But that's exactly what we expect technical support specialists to be good at. The problem was that ultimately, they had no clue. They were just fishing for answers. And as a result they wasted an hour and a half (and more) of my life in the process. Very disappointing. And frustrating. I can understand that a less patient person would have had a difficult time staying civil - what I was looking for was very simple: I wanted to install and run Microsoft Windows, all legal and above board. And I simply couldn't. • Left to my own devices, I fixed it in about 10 minutes. And that, to me, is the truly shameful part. The key was my statement early on: "The network card hadn't been configured yet, there was no external connectivity available." That's a statement I made repeatedly to the folks at Microsoft. The other key was noticing that I could get into the computer by using Safe Mode. My approach was very simple: get the network working, and then see if I could activate that way. I downloaded network drivers for this model of laptop from Dell, and using a DVD-RW, copied them on to the laptop, which I had rebooted into safe mode. The setup programs for the drivers didn't work - apparently the Windows Installer is disabled in safe mode. However the driver files were available. I went to the network device in device manager (it had the familiar yellow question mark that indicated there was a problem) clicked "update driver", pointed it to the folder containing the drivers for Windows XP for this laptop's network card, and installed. Then I rebooted. I didn't reboot into safe mode, just plain old default regular Windows. And directly into Windows I went. No "you must first activate before you can login", just directly into Windows. And yes, once there I saw the expected "you have 30 days to activate" pop up. And the network worked. As did activation. The machine's next to me as I type this, happily installing SP2, as it should. Aside from formatting that DVD-RW, it took 10 minutes, tops. • Here's my theory: A machine without connectivity of any sort is a problem. If Windows Setup can't determine that there's a way to connect to the internet ever (i.e. there's no network adapter of any kind - even though I had networking hardware, Windows didn't see it, as evidenced by the lack of drivers having been installed on setup), it seems like it drops back to this ultra "secure" mode where you must activate before you can even use your machine. I also theorize that since the "installation ID" is actually comprised of information about the system, like its network adapter's MAC or other serial number, the lack of that network adapter caused it problems to. It was unable (or perhaps unwilling) to calculate the installation ID that was necessary for me to activate by phone. A classic catch-22: I needed to activate by phone because I didn't have a network card to activate over the net, and I couldn't activate by phone because I didn't have a network card to generate the required ID. I could, of course, be wrong, but that's what it "feels" like. Two conclusions:
• Even though I worked there for so many years, and in part because I worked there for so many years, I take great care not to come across as some kind of Microsoft fanboy. While the preceding certainly wouldn't be mistaken for that, I know some think I cut Microsoft more slack than they deserve. I can't say what they "deserve", but I can say that my experience was very disappointing, and that I have a lot more sympathy for folks who have had to go through similar scenarios, without the fall back of being able to just get things to work themselves. If it weren't for the job requirements, this laptop might just have ended up running Linux. Related:
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I just upgraded to XP from Win98SE at home. After an hour and a half XP reported that my Motorola software wasn't compatible with XP, but the installation completed. I have the 30-minus days to activate icon sitting in the system tray. I found the Motorola software but the install didn't look quite right, but at least I have a computer that knows how to read USB drives, my digital camera and digital frame (hopefully). If I can get back on the net I will avoid the telephone activation. Thanks for the info on the USB drive viruses and turning off autoplay. Posted by: Doug at March 18, 2008 05:17 PMI am now using Ubuntu linux on a laptop which consistently froze when booting XP. Whatever I tried, including reformatting and reinstalling, the computer always froze at a certain point when starting XP and I couldn't figure out what the problem was. Although Ubuntu has fair share of problems and bugs, overall once it was setup to my liking, until I want/need to change the hardware, network or anything else that requires configuration it is nice and reliable. Posted by: Eli Coten at March 22, 2008 06:09 PMPersonally I wouldn't have bothered. I stopped using Microsoft Windows in 2002. The whole activation thing got up my nose once too often. I'm now a happy Linux (Mandriva) user, with no activation issues, no single computer install issues, and access to more software than I can poke a stick at. I no longer find anything compelling about Microsoft Windows, and when I am forced to use Microsoft Windows the experience is one of downgrading to a far less useful system with huge chunks of functionality missing. Posted by: tracyanne at March 28, 2008 02:47 PMI have read your article with great interest !If YOU had these problems,imagine an old geezer of 69 years of age (Me) who only had a PC for 1 year and learned mostly from "Dummies"books. In the future when you can't use the windows installer in safe mode you may wish to refer to this link, which also works in Vista: Posted by: Jeffery Land at March 29, 2008 09:11 AMMy opinion is that your install CD was corrupted, thats; why the installation did not reboot and was not finished (your NIC driver was missing) Anyhow, if you have a message that you need to activate and you cannot login, You can get around it, just look around try F1 for help, find any link that will open Internet Explorer. and with internet explorer you just launch explorer.exe and work with the PC for ever, just keep the windows with activation open, closing this window will end your session. Posted by: Richard at March 29, 2008 10:56 AMI had a similar experience, except mine wasn't an OEM version and I wasn't given given an option to activate by phone. I was told I had an illegal version, even though it was not and I had reinstalled it with no problems many times in the past. My question to you is why did you bother? I stayed with Ubuntu and even if I could reinstall windows I wouldn't. XP sits on the shelf gathering dust and thats where it will stay. Posted by: John at March 29, 2008 01:55 PMI can't understand why people put themselves through so much pain for an evil corporation like Microsoft. Just install Linux and you'll more software than you know what to do with, no malware, no spyware, no crashes no cost, no pain. Posted by: Dave at March 29, 2008 03:48 PMWho cares, running windows on a computer is like buying a car and having your keys stop working if you put new tires on it. Microsoft needs to stop acting like a bully in the market place. Posted by: xx at March 30, 2008 12:23 PMI had the same problem with a new system setup. I used the most current version of the MS install disk as well. Post a comment on "Why can't I activate Windows XP?":
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