Phone activation still should work. Just last night, I had to call on a
Dell Dimension that was reloaded. The rep took just a couple of ?'s
and we stepped through the numeric code entry. I don't remember
if the Voice ACD has a "Jump to Rep option", but you should be
able to speak to someone and get your validation completed.
Long Term - Invest in an imaging program and segment user data
to a non-XP partition. Then when things get mucked
up you can recover a clean instance in 10 Minutes or so.
"IJones" <IJones@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C618AD9E-CD0F-41EC-AEC6-546728A34A89@microsoft.com...
> Two years ago I purchased OEM copy of Win xp pro from New Egg for a pc I
> built for my son. After about a year of heavy gaming we experienced a
> system
> failure and we could not repair windows so a fresh install was in order.
> Windows would not activate automatically and I called the telephone
> activation number. I spoke with a gentleman who guided me through a
> process
> which included entering numbers which were different from the product key
> numbers on the sticker I had put on the side of the pc. Yesterday windows
> groung to a halt and once again a fresh install was in order. I cannot
> activate windows again and this time there is no one to talk to with the
> telephone activation service (activation process is by voice software) and
> the message I get from them is that I do not have an authorized copy of
> win
> xp. I am beginning to think that the nice man from Microsoft has changed
> the
> way the activation is looking at my copy of win xp. Where can I get help
> from
> Microsoft to activate windows. No hardware changes have been made.
