XP SP3 blank "Active Windows" screen

[wlan]

My old graphic card stop working, so I installed a new one. When rebooted the windows XP sp3, I got a message of need to activate Windows within 3 days, because of changes. So I agree to activate Windows, but only thing happening was blank "Activate Windows" screen. After waiting 1/2 hour I got a message, that "the running script might slow down Internet Exploer (IE8). Do you want to stop script or continue". After continue the white activation screen change to blue and picture of two keys appears. Nothing else. If not continue, windows start normally, but small icon appears to down bar saying 3 days left for activation.

I contact local MS support, follow their instructions (registry changes, restart msoobe.exe, make changes in Safe Mode etc.) but without any success! Now they say that I should make clean installation of XP, but I do not want to install and configure all my apps again (doing video editing with several programs)

By myself I have followed threads here and other forums without getting any help to situation. Now activation time has change to 30 days (by following instruction from some forum). I have reinstall SP3 and install the latest IE8 version. Somehow I feel, that msoobe.exe run some scripts within IE8 and this is not working.

Any advice from this forum what to try next to solve the problem? I have the legal key nbr.

 

[soundguruman]

I am thinking that the difficulty you had was that there were security program(s) running when you tried to install the video card, and these prevented the system from reconfiguration.
Should have shut off the security, notifier, and firewall before starting anything. OR if you had "free" security programs installed from downloads, should have deleted them all first.
Installing free programs often causes conflicts, especially if they are security programs. These will often prevent repairs, or other functions, installations from working normally.

Another thing that happens is that the video card is designed to run 2 or 3 displays and you are not looking at the main display. We had the same problem, we were looking at the alternate display. We changed the display settings so that monitor one was the main display.

You should try to recover your personal files (and back them up) before reformatting the drive entirely and doing a fresh install from scratch.
In the future, use an all in one professional security program, not a free download. Do not install multiple security programs. This will be of great benefit when you try to repair malfunctions.

 

[wlan]

I am thinking that the difficulty you had was that there were security program(s) running when you tried to install the video card, and these prevented the system from reconfiguration.
Should have shut off the security, notifier, and firewall before starting anything. OR if you had "free" security programs installed from downloads, should have deleted them all first.
Installing free programs often causes conflicts, especially if they are security programs. These will often prevent repairs, or other functions, installations from working normally.

Ok . Now I removed antivirus and firewall. No effect to msoobe. It is showing blank window. Do you have any hint to recover to renew activation key, so that I don't have to install from scratch?

I have only one display, which is the main one.

 

[wlan]

Problem SOLVED!

Hi
I did not yet reinstall XP! I wanted to find out more why msoobe.exe is not proceeding and below you find RegMon view, where msoobe try to create a key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE\CKPT, but access is denied. This loop continues until I stop msoobe-process!

34.50035858 msoobe.exe:896 CreateKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE\CKPT ACCESS DENIED Access: 0x2 Doody-8FF36B\Owner
34.50038147 msoobe.exe:896 CreateKey HKLM\SOFTWARE SUCCESS Access: 0x2000000
34.50040054 msoobe.exe:896 CreateKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft SUCCESS Access: 0x2000000
34.50041580 msoobe.exe:896 CloseKey HKLM\SOFTWARE SUCCESS
34.50043488 msoobe.exe:896 CreateKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows SUCCESS Access: 0x2000000
34.50044250 msoobe.exe:896 CloseKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft SUCCESS
34.50046158 msoobe.exe:896 CreateKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion SUCCESS Access: 0x2000000
34.50046921 msoobe.exe:896 CloseKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows SUCCESS
34.50048828 msoobe.exe:896 CreateKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup SUCCESS Access: 0x2000000
34.50049973 msoobe.exe:896 CloseKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion SUCCESS
34.50051498 msoobe.exe:896 CreateKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE SUCCESS Access: 0x2000000
34.50052643 msoobe.exe:896 CloseKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup SUCCESS
34.50057220 msoobe.exe:896 CreateKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE\CKPT ACCESS DENIED Access: 0x2 Doody-8FF36B\Owner

Problem solution is:

I granted all rights to main user in regedit for key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE\CKPT
Then I started msoobe.exe /a again. And voilá it works now and I change activation key.... And system is up and running

 

[Natetronn]

Problem solution is:

I granted all rights to main user in regedit for key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE\CKPT
Then I started msoobe.exe /a again. And voilá it works now and I change activation key.... And system is up and running

Tried a bunch of stuff from other threads and this was the one which finally worked!

Thank you!!!