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Development the open-source way…

28/04/06

Windows authentication is annoying

Permalink 05:31:05 pm, Categories: General, 251 words  

I'm trying to be legitimate, and all it does is causes me problems.

I got my laptop (an Acer) about four years ago. It came with XP Home and one of those annoying restore disks that'll trash everything and reset partitions and things. About a year later, I removed XP and installed Redhat Linux. Some time between then and now I replaced the 10GB disk with a 40GB disk.

Now I'm trying to reinstall XP as a dual-boot (hopefully keeping my Linux install intact) but it doesn't want to activate. Installation wouldn't recognise my CD key, so I used a pirated one to get past it. Now I'm at activation, I've put my actual CD key in and it is still rejecting it. I contacted the MS activation phone line to see if that would help, but all they said is go to Acer.

All I'm trying to do is reinstall Windows using a legitimate license that isn't even installed on any other machines, and all it'll do is get in my way :\ There's got to be a way to get the stupid thing to work, because the worst part is that it hasn't even given me my 30 days without activation.

Hey ho, if I finally get it working then it might eventually be worth it to be able to download WGA-secured items like the DirectX SDK and to be able to work in Visual Studio while my fiancee plays Sims2 on my desktop machine...Oh, to have the simple life!

Permalink 3 comments • Trackback (0)

Comments, Trackbacks:

Comment from: RUMcajZ [Visitor]
hi,

Ive got same problem. Ive tried to install new installation of Win XP Home on my ACER laptop. Ive put CD key I found at the bottom of the laptop. Installation took CD key without problems. But I cannot activate it. It says CD key is wrong.

Did you manage to fix it?
Pls let me know.
Thanks.
RUM
Permalink 25/05/06 @ 10:43
Comment from: IBBoard [Member]
The CD I had was WinXP with SP2, so I'm going to try and get hold of a copy without XP2 and see if it makes a difference. Having talked to Microsoft, they sent me to Acer. I emailed Acer saying I didn't want to re-install from the restore CD because that would reset everything and I want to keep my Linux install intact and I have an upgraded hard disk. What did they say? Basically "try the restore CD"...not useful!

I'll blog again if I manage to get it working when I don't install with SP2 built in. For now I'd rather stick with having Linux on my laptop and just forget about having a legit install of Windows on there as well.
Permalink 25/05/06 @ 13:51
Comment from: IBBoard [Member]
Or maybe I won't. I'll add it as an article if I get it to work, but The Real Death of a Blog means it won't be in a commentable form.
Permalink 30/05/06 @ 09:19

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