How does Product Activation work?

[jy88888888]

How does Product Activation work? I want WinXP but how do you activate the product? I regularly format my hard drive and if it means waiting on the phone for hours just to get WinXP reactivated, I will definitely stick with Win98SE

AMD VS INTEL - AMD anyday

 

[Zlash]

You won't have to regularly format with XP, but yes you'd probably have to do that...or go with 2k.

<font color=red>:</font color=red> <font color=white>:</font color=white> <font color=blue>:</font color=blue>

 

[Zoron]

Activation is easily done over the internet. ZLash is right, you won't need to regularly format your hard drive with XP... but if you do, activation is not a problem... provided you haven't changed too much hardware in your computer.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[carlbeck]

Windows XP Tips
Never Re-Activate After Installation
Posted By: Byron Hinson - Mailed In by Manu Raam

If you have to reinstall Windows XP you normally will have to reactivate too. Well not anymore. Just copy wpa.dbl after you activated the first time. It is located in the WINDOWS\system32 folder. Now if you reinstall Windows XP just copy the file back and you're up and running again.

As long as the hardware is the same as the information in wpa.dbl you won't even get a message to activate.

 

[jy88888888]

So is this the activation hack that I've been hearing about?

AMD VS INTEL - AMD anyday