XP activtion "locked" on a cloned HD

[raueda1]

I just assembled a T42 out of a bunch of spare compenents and it seems to be healthy (thank god ) except a small detail.

I'm using a cloned drive from another machine with XP pro. i booted several times during the reassembly process and it went fine except that XP warned me I had 3 days to activate. No problem, I thought, since I have a legit COA for the machine. i wanted to put it all together first so the activation would see the final hardware configuration.

Now the drive seems to have fallen into some kind of lockdown mode. It starts to boot but stops at the Windows XP splash screen with a microsoft banner notice on the bottom right. The banner says "this copy of windows is not activated. In order to be properly licensed, this copy of Windows must be activated." But, the screen has nothing to click, nowhere to go, it's just frozen. To close it I need to do a hard reboot with the power button.

I've never seen this before. I swapped the drive out to another unit and it does the same thing. It wants me to activate but won't me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mpcook]

This happened to me when I installed from a restore set of disks for a T23. I called the MS number and got a live person, who gave me a key, since I had a T23 with XP sticker.

If you have a Thinkpad that came with XP, MS should give you a key to make XP legal on that piece of equipment. The laptop would have to come with a license of course. If you made it from spare parts, maybe that is not going to be apparent to MS.

Mike

[Harryc]

Try booting into safe mode and uninstallng IE7. Now try to logon normally.

[richk]

The COA on the machine cannot be used to activate XP. It is an OEM number. If you install from recovery CDs, you do not need it, but it won't work with a non-IBM-OEM installation.

[raueda1]

This happened to me when I installed from a restore set of disks for a T23. I called the MS number and got a live person, who gave me a key, since I had a T23 with XP sticker.
Mike

The screen is basically blank except for Windows logo in the middle and the notification on the lower right. There's no place to enter key, nothing is live. ctrl-alt-del has no effect.

[raueda1]

Try booting into safe mode and uninstallng IE7. Now try to logon normally.

Good sugggestion, but no joy.

It would let me into the boot menu and try to start safe mode. All the safe mode stuff seemed to load, but the same notification screen came up again. I tried safe mode (boot to command prompt), same result. It's as if the previous boots told XP to just lock up the installation. I've done lots of reinstalls, disk clones, reactivations, etc but I've never seen this screen before.

[Marin85]

Any button/link for help? Does F1 work?

[rkawakami]

I'm using a cloned drive from another machine with XP pro. <snip>

My guess would be that the donor machine is either not a Thinkpad or had a retail copy of Windows installed on it. If the basic hardware between your T42 and the other system is different enough, Windows will detect this at first boot and then trigger the activation/registration/licensing requirement. As stated earlier, the COA on the bottom of the laptop (assuming it's the original one that came with the system from the factory) is for use with the original recovery disk set from IBM. It can't be used to activate the OS in this situation. The best course of action would be to obtain the factory recovery disk set and re-load the OS.

[sktn77a]

The COA on the machine cannot be used to activate XP. It is an OEM number. If you install from recovery CDs, you do not need it, but it won't work with a non-IBM-OEM installation.

That's interesting, I used my thinkpad XP key on a non-thinkpad computer with an OEM (non-IBM) XP install disk. The cloned HDD probaly already has a key that conflicts with your Thinkpad's COA. However, why it would nee to be activated is a mystery (unless it's a regular OEM install and not a thinkpad recovery CD install)?

??????????

[smidgley]

The COA on the machine cannot be used to activate XP. It is an OEM number. If you install from recovery CDs, you do not need it, but it won't work with a non-IBM-OEM installation.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are saying but if you are suggesting that the CD key on the COA on the bottom of a ThinkPad won't work with a generic (system builders) OEM disk, I'd have to say that my experience differs from yours.

I've done it several hundred times. Sometimes there are snags, like having to call Microsoft's automated activation number, but it always works, one way or the other.

[killer]

I agree with Smidgley, even though I've never used it, the code on the base sticker should clear you to reinstall the preinstalled Windows version on the machine you own.

[raueda1]

FWIW, I share smidgley and killer's experience with the OEM disk. Anyway, have any of you guys ever even heard of this warning screen with no apparent means to perform the activation? There are no hotlinks, right-click elements, active Fx keys, NOTHING. I don't see any alternative to a clean install, but I'd love to know what happened.

[smidgley]

A couple of things you might try:

Hit F8 at the end of the ThinkPad logo screen at startup and choose "Last Known Good Configuration" if that appears as an option

Boot from an XP installation disk and run Check Disk from the recovery console.

A repair installation should reset the activation timer and give you another chance to do so but at this point, wouldn't be a lot less work than a complete reinstall.