Windows Reinstallation

"it says it's activated" when did this occur? When you reinstalled XP after replacing the motherboard or are you meaning that you assume it's activated because you only hooked up the original harddrive with XP already on it, and now it wants to activate again?

If the second option is what you did, then yes it does need to be activated again, so hook it up to a modem line and it will automatically dial the 800 number to MS and activate itself again.

If XP has been installed on that harddrive longer than three or six months, it will go through the activation without any problems.....however, if it's less than that old, you will be given another screen that has another 800 number for you to call so the techs can give you the new activation number. They will stay on the phone with you while you type it in and get it right and get the thumbs up sign before they hang up.

This is normal activity for XP because any major upgrade in hardware will cause it to need activation again.

TONI

After booting up it has the usual login screen but you cant login..its says "lets activate windows!" and it searches then says" this product is already activated click ok to exit" then it brings it back to login screen and repeats..

is the username different at the next login page? Is the computer already hooked up to a modem? Just wondering if it knows 'instinctively' that it still needs to be reactivated due to new hardware and as long as there is no modem to do it, it just stops you cold?

TONI

I think its purposly like that but i hear that when you put in the reinstalation disk for Win XP you can choose in the BIOS to boot from disk... cuz if i can do that i reset XP

and "register" confused. There is NO requirement to register XP. Activation is the anti theft process.

Have you tried Compaq's website/tech support? I just used the site and their tech support on an HP issue and was totally impressed with the quality of the site and the support.