transferred my hard drive -- stuck in XP activation loop

[9Jack9]

Hello friendly Windows forum folks,

Built my own desktop PC this weekend. I'd never done it before, so I half expected a giant lightning bolt to shoot out of the case when I turned it on. But everything powered on correctly. I'd transferred my previous hard drive w/Windows XP SP1 on it from an old Dell PC I bought about five years ago.

Imagine my dismay when, after attempting to log in as the administrator, it said "This copy of Windows must be activated before you can log on. Do you want to activate Windows now? Y/N"

So I click "Yes," and it takes me to a Window that says "Windows is already activated. Click OK to exit." "OK" takes me back to the log-in screen, and when I log in, it takes me to the "must be activated" prompt yet again. So I'm stuck in a loop, ad nauseam.

I've looked into this a bit, and apparently when Windows detects a significant change to the hardware of the system, it wants to reauthenticate. Any idea on how to bypass this? One problem is that I cannot remember if Dell packaged an actual Windows XP CD with my desktop purchase. I'm usually very good about keeping documentation and discs, but I can't seem to find either my receipt from Dell or any install CDs.

An additional detail is that I can apparently get into Windows in Safe Mode. I'd just been hanging out in the BIOS, since I didn't have much else to do, and when I quit without saving changes, it prompted me to enter Safe Mode because Windows hadn't started up properly.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

[pentachris]

Sorry, but you won't get any help bypassing WPA on these forums. The Windows that came with the Dell is legally tied to the machine it was sold with.

[9Jack9]

Ouch, that's frustrating. And I wish I'd anticipated that. In an ideal world, shouldn't it be like buying an album -- after you've bought it, there's nothing wrong with, say, transferring the CD to your computer to your iPod, as long as you're not disseminating it for use by others?

[jlreich]

If it were a retail version you could transfer it to any one (1) machine that you like. Since it is OEM it can only be used on the machine it was purchased with. That's why the OEM's get a copy cheaper, and also MS is not responsible for support.

I suggest that you pick up a copy of XP and do a repair install. That should get your system up and running again without losing programs and data.

[Paul Komski]

In an ideal world, shouldn't it be like buying an albumIt's different because what you agree to when you initiate the first installation or "break the seal" is agree to use the software under licence. Your licence outlined in the EULA determines what you can do with the software.

A repair installation, as indicated, is one way but unless you want to keep all the software then a clean reinstallation with a newly purchased installation CD is probably preferable - particularly on a nice clean rebuild.

The other free way is to consider Ubuntu or other Linux distro of your choice!