XP activation!!!

Just had to restore my active C: partition and all went well but during boot windows advised that my system had changed considerably and I needed to activate windows again.

Anyway did that without any issue but now wondering why windows needed activating again as no hardware changes had taken place could it be that the XP security features are not being back up correctly by ATI?

 

I did a triple boot WinXP Pro restore and all 3 boots came up normally with no activation required.
Hope this helps,
Skyhawk

 

Hi, djmorgan

I agree with Skyhawk

One on the many reasons of using an Image restore, rather the an Install is not having to Reactivate.

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Although reactivation *will* be required if you restore to a system whose hardware is significantly different to how it was when the backup was carried out.

 

Well there was no hardware changes BUT I did clean the keyboard whilst the computer was off, but my computer comes on with the touch of a key and it went into the bios setup and somehow in cleaning the keys the date got set to 2082........... then I rebooted and my UPS told me I needed a new battery and a couple of other programs grumbled, that's when I realised the date had been set wrongly.

So I set it back to the correct date but stylexp refused to work saying I had set the clock back so I did the ATI restore and after that I got the request to re activate windows.

So certainly no hardware changes but jumping forward 78 years probably scared the s**t out of everything, also ATI started to do a schedule back up in 2082 which I stopped.... hey maybe I was just lucky could have been worst.

Moral of the story is Don't clean anything, leave it dirty

 

Isn't part of the activation number created for your PC influenced by the date/time? Someone told me it was so that may be the cause of the problem.
John

 

If there is NO CHANGE in hardware from the time that the image file was created, then you shouldn't have to reactivate WXP if you had a good image file to restore from (same PC). A corrupt BIOS may conflict with the info stored in Windows. Clearing the CMOS battery, resetting the BIOS to default configuration, and finally, restoring the image file should fix the registration issue.