Activating XP

[Boothbay]

A few days ago I had to reinstall my XP and always get reminded to activate it and I have 30 days to do so. But I was hesitating, because I felt that I may have to reinstall again, and this way, when I activate it would cover both reinstallations. I don't know if it works that way. Anyhow, yesterday I booted my system and was prevented to enter xp until i activate. Now, were talking only 5 or 6 days since. So with no choice I tried to activate it by phone over the internet. The operator said the numbers were not valid. I called my vendor and they were suprised and also mentioned that if they are asking to activate in such short of time...then my cmos battery must be going and needs to be replaced. Then I recalled the product key numbers were on my computer tag..so I entered those and it worked. Now, I have no problem, so far, useing the computer...so whats with the cmos battery theory? Anyone?

[kenc51]

when you activate XP M$ know what hardware your using and what date and time your done so.... the prob is that when you activated XP you done so b4 setting the clock!!!! your pc must have had a date in the past.... you then go on-line and windows updates to correct time automatically..... It stupidly then thinks your trying to bypass the inbuilt copy protection.... Or something like that

Could also be like they said, you CMOS battery is flat, so when you power off your pc it looses the time..... Your CMOS batter is a flat silver battery on you motherboard which saves your Bios settings when the pc is powered off.....I have this problem everytime i reinstall, as I have changed hardware so many time since first getting XP that M$ ALWAYS ask me to ring their rep to activate over the phone

[gvblake22]

Yeah, M$ always makes me reactivate over the phone now too
"Please read off the second set of numbers. Ok, now the third... I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please read off the third set of numbers."


But then I found out you can just press the numbers on the phone and it works just fine, so no more dealing with that pushy automated B^&*$

Your reasoning behind the CMOS battery kenc seems to make sense to me though.

[Boothbay]

Yeah, M$ always makes me reactivate over the phone now too
"Please read off the second set of numbers. Ok, now the third... I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please read off the third set of numbers."


But then I found out you can just press the numbers on the phone and it works just fine, so no more dealing with that pushy automated B^&*$

Your reasoning behind the CMOS battery kenc seems to make sense to me though.

Well, its now going on 2 days since and have rebooted a few times and the clock is keeping time. if it were the battery, wouldn't i be getting different readings on my computeres clock?

[gvblake22]

No, we are saying that the fact that the computer's internal clock resets when you reset the CMOS could possibly throw off the windows XP activation somehow.

And the time you set in the BIOS is the same time that you can set in windows, so you would not get two different times. If you reset the CMOS (resetting the BIOS clock) and then boot into windows, the clock in windows would be reset too.

I say as long as you are up and running and your clock can keep time, you should be good to go; I wouldn't worry about it.

[FZ1]

Yeah, M$ always makes me reactivate over the phone now too
"Please read off the second set of numbers. Ok, now the third... I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please read off the third set of numbers."

Ha, I had to do this for the first time yesterday.