Can't activate: msoobe.exe does nothing!

[Rowen Gunn]

I'll start by saying this is a fully legit copy of Windows XP Home with valid
OEM key.

My client's laptop HD failed, so I got another and recovered nearly 100% of
it to another drive. XP was a little wacky do I did a repair install using an
XP Home SP3 OEM disk. Worked fine as expected, boots into windows and... it
won't activate.

MSOOBE.EXE Runs, however it just sits there doing nothing. You can see it in
taskmanager taking up around 10mb of memory but it's not doing a thing. No
windows, nothing. You can manually end it in taskmanager and run it again,
and it will for maybe 1-2s use CPU and then go back to 0% usuage and just sit
there at 10mb ram doing nothing.

However, the timer is still counting down to activate XP. My client doesn't
want to reformat the PC either, so I need to figure out what's causing
MSOOBE.EXE not to work. I've noticed this before when repair installing with
an SP3 disk but it was once out of a 100 repairs so figured it was a fluke.

[Sean Wilson[_2_]]

Have you tried running "%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a" from Start
> Run ?


"Rowen Gunn" > wrote in message
...
> I'll start by saying this is a fully legit copy of Windows XP Home with
> valid
> OEM key.
>
> My client's laptop HD failed, so I got another and recovered nearly 100%
> of
> it to another drive. XP was a little wacky do I did a repair install using
> an
> XP Home SP3 OEM disk. Worked fine as expected, boots into windows and...
> it
> won't activate.
>
> MSOOBE.EXE Runs, however it just sits there doing nothing. You can see it
> in
> taskmanager taking up around 10mb of memory but it's not doing a thing. No
> windows, nothing. You can manually end it in taskmanager and run it again,
> and it will for maybe 1-2s use CPU and then go back to 0% usuage and just
> sit
> there at 10mb ram doing nothing.
>
> However, the timer is still counting down to activate XP. My client
> doesn't
> want to reformat the PC either, so I need to figure out what's causing
> MSOOBE.EXE not to work. I've noticed this before when repair installing
> with
> an SP3 disk but it was once out of a 100 repairs so figured it was a
> fluke.

[Rowen Gunn]

Yes I have, and sadly it produces the exact same result.

"Sean Wilson" wrote:

> Have you tried running "%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a" from Start
> > Run ?
>
>
> "Rowen Gunn" > wrote in message
> ...
> > I'll start by saying this is a fully legit copy of Windows XP Home with
> > valid
> > OEM key.
> >
> > My client's laptop HD failed, so I got another and recovered nearly 100%
> > of
> > it to another drive. XP was a little wacky do I did a repair install using
> > an
> > XP Home SP3 OEM disk. Worked fine as expected, boots into windows and...
> > it
> > won't activate.
> >
> > MSOOBE.EXE Runs, however it just sits there doing nothing. You can see it
> > in
> > taskmanager taking up around 10mb of memory but it's not doing a thing. No
> > windows, nothing. You can manually end it in taskmanager and run it again,
> > and it will for maybe 1-2s use CPU and then go back to 0% usuage and just
> > sit
> > there at 10mb ram doing nothing.
> >
> > However, the timer is still counting down to activate XP. My client
> > doesn't
> > want to reformat the PC either, so I need to figure out what's causing
> > MSOOBE.EXE not to work. I've noticed this before when repair installing
> > with
> > an SP3 disk but it was once out of a 100 repairs so figured it was a
> > fluke.
>
>
>

[Richard[_12_]]

Have you tried SFC /SCANNOW from Command Prompt or Start>Run?
Have you checked Event Viewer for an error report on msoobe.exe?
(MSOOBE = MicroSoft Out Of Box Experience)

> "Rowen Gunn" > wrote in message
> ...
> Yes I have, and sadly it produces the exact same result.
>
>> "Sean Wilson" wrote:
>>
>> Have you tried running "%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a" from
>> Start > Run ?
>>
>>
>>> "Rowen Gunn" > wrote in message
>>> ...
>>> I'll start by saying this is a fully legit copy of Windows XP Home with
>>> valid OEM key.
>>>
>>> My client's laptop HD failed, so I got another and recovered
>>> nearly 100% of it to another drive. XP was a little wacky do I did
>>> a repair install using an XP Home SP3 OEM disk. Worked fine as
>>> expected, boots into windows and... it won't activate.
>>>
>>> MSOOBE.EXE Runs, however it just sits there doing nothing. You can
>>> see it in taskmanager taking up around 10mb of memory but it's not
>>> doing a thing. No windows, nothing. You can manually end it in
>>> taskmanager and run it again, and it will for maybe 1-2s use CPU
>>> and then go back to 0% usuage and just sit there at 10mb ram
>>> doing nothing.
>>>
>>> However, the timer is still counting down to activate XP. My client
>>> doesn't want to reformat the PC either, so I need to figure out
>>> what's causing MSOOBE.EXE not to work. I've noticed this before
>>> when repair installing with an SP3 disk but it was once out of a
>>> 100 repairs so figured it was a fluke.
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