REQ: Help with XP woes

[young@and.resteless]

YOu know, as I sit here eagerly awaiting a reply on my post, I
suddenly realize that I did not have my cartidge-based d drive (data)
'on' during the XP install. Does this mean that activation will not
know I have a d drive and therefore not activate anyway?
I am still at 1%!)

================================================== ==============


My WinXP arrived today and I installed it - but it insists on
'activating' it. I thought my friend had said he had some small time
frame to do that, like a month. That's bad enough, but when you
activate, it picks up your computer hardware so that it can 'lock' the
OS to that system. Great! I realized I did not have my
cartridge-based d drive on, so I restarted, with it on. Now the
damned thing wants to do a scandisk on that d drive, and it is locked
on 1% and has been for 30 minutes! Now the drive is and was okay 60
minutes ago. As I sit here looking at this, I now realize that even
if I can get over the 1% (doubtful), then I probably can never switch
d drives - thereby preventing me from switching data drives. Great!

Of course there is MS number to call, but of course it is toll.

Now what? Wasted my money (again)?

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

wrote:
> YOu know, as I sit here eagerly awaiting a reply on my post, I
> suddenly realize that I did not have my cartidge-based d drive (data)
> 'on' during the XP install. Does this mean that activation will not
> know I have a d drive and therefore not activate anyway?
> I am still at 1%!)
>

You have a lot of misconceptions about Windows Product Activation. The
secondary hard drive is not associated with activation, only the primary
drive where Windows is installed has any value for activation. See the
following article for a good description of WPA, it should answer all of
your questions.

Windows Product Activation (WPA):
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php

--
Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

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