Help Microsoft has me locked out of my PC!

Factual Questions
1

Back in my days at MicroWarehouse I received a NFR copy of XP. It came in a plain white envelope with a CD Key on it. This CD was handed out by a Microsoft employee.

Over the years I lost the actual CD but kept the key and I was able to reinstall using other media.

On Saturday Windows popped up a box saying that my copy failed the genuine tests. I went through the rigmarole and was able to reactive it. I then installed some updates and rebootied.

On rebooting it said it was not activated and I need to activate it to continue. When I hit OK instead of opening up the activation window and letting me call Microsoft it just logs me off. Same thing happens if I hit no to activate.

I can boot into safe mode so access to my files is not an issue and I have backups of my data. I just don’t want to have to do a full reinstall.

I’ve been on Microsoft’s site and saw that if I edit a registry key it will allow me rerun activation. The problem is when I go to access the key it tells me I don’t have access to it.

I’ve tried access this key in Safemode as well as booting a PE CD, mounting the hives and trying to edit it that way.

I’ve now screwed it up so much that I can’t get safemode to run.

Any suggestions other thank nuking it from orbit?

(I won’t be online again until tomorrow night)

2

This might not work, but have you tried contacting Microsoft and dealing with them?

3

Rerunning the windows install would probably be easier/faster than going through all the steps to undo a corrupt activation.

4

Do you mean that you have the key you were physically given, or that you’ve still got a note of the key code? In the latter case, you may be SOL. Better get hunting that CD case!

5

I have the key code that was on the envelope

6

Have you tried doing an upgrade install? Make sure you slipstream a copy of the install set with SP3.

7

Quartz I will be trying that next.