rkoenn
Senior member
I was trying to repair a friend's laptop last night that runs XP Media Edition. The network was hosed up and rather than start clean I hoped a repair install would fix it. There was one hiccup in the repair but the machine rebooted and continued installing. After the final reboot it started normally but when attempting to login it gives the Activation is required: continue yes/no message. I say yes and after a bit of a delay it returns to the login screen. In safe mode it refuses to login because it is not activated. Bummer!!! So I have a chicken and egg problem, can't get in to try to run activation because it isn't activated! I have scoured the web for a solution short of a clean install since the guy really doesn't want to rebuild the machine. I have the drive in another desktop so he could retrieve some data so I have complete access to all the files on the system. Is there some way to do something with this drive to at least get me past the won't login because you aren't activated problem? Thanks for any assistance, now I see why Windows activation is such a big pain.
