XP pro Activation Wizard does not work

Repair installation also causes problems

[onlineleben]

Hi all,
ran into a problem with my XP pro installation that used to work fine since 2003. All of a sudden it requestred a new activation (due to a change in RAM size I did 4 month ago).
When I wanted to start the activation wizard it didn't work (only showning a small blue window with two broken-picture links).
Now I cannot log onto the system anymore and want to do a repair installation by booting from the CD-Rom.
The current challenge I am facing is:
when prompted for selecting the windows installation I want to repair, I enter 1 and hit enter.
Next I am asked for the Admin password. Since there is no PW I should hit the enter key, but this exits the console program and returns a nice c:\windows

Any Ideas how to solve this?
All input is much appreciated.

PS: just got an idea myself. Is there a way to just re-install the files for the activation wizard?

[youfoundjake]

onlineleben, if I'm reading what you posted correctly, don't boot up into safe mode by using the F8 key and selecting recovery console. By doing that, and being prompted for the password, you will be sent to the DOS prompt in which case you copy and move files where ever you wish with full admin rights, particularly the Windows\system32 folder.
If you are wanting to do a repair of the OS, then you would want to boot from the cd, and that's where it will give you the option to do a repair, which is basically copying all the files back over again, in case the files on the hard drive are corrupt, or if its a simple RAM upgrade, (not sure how that would trigger a flag to Microsoft(I've changed motherboards which is more extreme then memory and had no activation issue)) you can do a repair, and it would detect all your hardware and install updated drivers, which should resolve the activation issue.
Hope the helps.

[Blacksheep]

What you have described as far as the control panel sign in is exactly as it should work. After windows gives you the command prompt you can run several dos commands to attempt to repair your files.

I would recommend running the "chkdsk \r" command at the dos prompt. this will often repair a lot of file and or boot errors. Just leave off the quotes.

chkdsk = Check disk for errors
\r = Automatically attempt to repair the errors found

other wise it will just report the errors.

[Blacksheep]

Ok bad habit of using the wrong switch command

Switch should be /r

For a switch command use the slash under the question mark on the keyboard.

[onlineleben]

Thanks guys for the replys to my post.
Anyway, I had to solve the problem in the meantime, otherwise I couldn't participate here anymore.
Booting from CD worked in sofar that I got the menu for starting the repair installation, but when prompted for the admin pw, I got the old DOS promt as reply.
I finally bit the bullet and called M$'s activation department(toll free number obtained from a XP reference book browsed in my local bookshop) and was put through to customer service (which actually is a quite costly phone number when you dial directly). They listened and promised to mail me a new product-id. After 4 hours waiting I called again and then had the code within a minute.
Next step was a full install of XP professional which took some time. After that I had to download about 60 updates from the windows update site and then install SP2 which I thought to be the last step. No way - lots of other updates were downloaded and installed, which again took ages (on my 10Mb line).
All in all, the 5 minute hardware upgrade from 512 MB to 1 GB resulted in about 2.5 days spent on backing up sensitive data, posting and waiting for advice from webmasterworld, obtaining the product code from M$ and finally installing the OS plus updates and service packs.

Lesson learned: take good care of your product codes/registration keys and keep them in a safe place. I printed out the mail from M$ with the product key and put a copy into the case of my PC as well as into my bank safe.