Trouble activating winxp pro 2002!?

[chet]

Have recently re-formatted and re-installed a legitimate copy Windows XP 2002 Professional on my pc. Have had no trouble in the past reformatting and reinstalling.

Is there a limit to the number of times you can reinstall windows xp?

BTW, how does the key system for XP work? Are all Windows XP CD's the same but with different product keys!? Can I obtain a new product code from the internet?

So the problem is, have paid for a copy of windows xp and am unable to flamin' use it !!

Thanks guys ...

[0iD]

Normally you just call the number given & re-activate over the phone. I've re-activated so many times now I have to call. Just takes longer.

[DaftpuNk]

You get a certain number of activations that you can do over the Internet, and once those are taken up, the program and the phone button-dialling game for the 25-digit code will tell you that you can no longer activate. "Oh no's!" people exclaim. My ~£100 product is now useless!

Fear not, you just talk to a real person on the microsoft activation line and read your code to them, they then read you one back to activate manually and it's all done. Simple stuff, bit annoying though yeah.

[Kezzer]

Actually windows activation is rather arbitrary. Mine activated fine over the net twice, then i had to do phone activation and then every format after that it's been over the net. Strange innit

[Stringent]

Yeah I had to phone them, after that one call it kinda reset and its ok to activate over the net again.

[DaftpuNk]

It's down to when there's a sufficient amount of time between. Two activations close together smells too much like different computers being setup to MS