Never Reactivate

Many of us have had to activate their installation of XP more than one time. Sometimes so often that we actually have to call in to have it activated. This can be time consuming and is a lot more trouble than it's really worth.

For those of you who have not done so you will want to follow these directions first.

1. Open My Computer
2. Click on Tools
3. Click on Folder options
4. Click on View tab
5. Scroll down
6. Tick "Show hidden files and folders
7. Untick "Hide extensions for known file types"
8. Untick "Hide protected operating system files"

Or you can just click start > run > type "control folders" without the quotes and hit enter.

Now that you can actually see what you're doing;

1. Navigate to here C:\Windows\System32\
2. Find and copy "wpa.dbl"

When you re-install XP again you will just go ahead and copy the "wpa.dbl" back to the System32 folder and reboot. This will prevent you from needing to go through the activation process again. This method will not work for people who are forced to reactivate due to hardware modifications. For that method you will either need to use the automated online activation or you will need to use the phone activation options that are available during the activation process. It's pretty easy to do either one, if the automated activation doesn't work then the phone activation takes only a few minutes and is generally pretty painless.

OS: XP > Advanced
Date: 07/27/05

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