Is my system valid?

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For reasons not relevant here, I decided to ditch the Windows XP Professional SP2 system supplied with my Lenovo laptop and install a fresh system from non Lenovo sources (except for drivers).

Purchased in 2008 (to have as a spare) Windows XP Professional SP2 OEM CD in its sealed wrapping. Now I have slipstreamed SP3 into the SP2 to produce Windows XP Professional SP3 OEM.

Removed the old XP installation from the laptop by formatting C: and installed the new slip streamed XP onto C:. At appropriate stage entered the product key on the label, which was accepted. Declined to activate, which was not possible online because laptop was not connected by wireless or LAN.

Later (after installing Lenovo drivers and setting display and desktop my way, etc) connected to LAN and internet. Tried to activate but could not find any relevant menu item. Ran “00be/msoobe/a” and was told that it was already activated. Puzzled by that.

Tried to run Windows Update (actually Microsoft Update). Was told that I did not have a genuine windows and was unable to run Microsoft Update. Furious with that. Emailed vendor (Amazon UK reseller) arranging for refund and return instructions.

Did a bit of Googling and found Windows Product Key Update Tool. Ran it and inserted the product key that Lenovo supplied with the original XP that came with the machine. Imagine my surprise when it worked and I was able to run Microsoft Update normally.

I feel that there is a catch somewhere. Did I really have a pirated CD, and has what I have done made it into a legal system? Will the new installation turn round and bite me one day? If it was a pirated CD which has been made legal – can I trust that the pirated CD now made honest had correct and uncorrupted Windows files on it? It would be very difficult now to get another (legal) copy of XP. I do want to stay with XP until April 2014.

Genuine Advantage validation seems to run when it feels like it. Is there a way to force it to re-validate again. It would be reassuring if I could get it to repeat that the system is valid.

Is it OK to stick with this, please? (If so I can tell the vendor to relax).

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Hi John, Welcome to The Lounge.
For future reference, any install of an OS on a laptop should be done with a wired router connection.

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Not sure what caused that (OEM license for XP SP2 used with XP SP3?), but it’s the key that actually determines whether your installation is legitimate or, so using a valid key should prevent any further issues. There have been cases, however, where there have been problems with WGA, so I am not sure if anyone can give any assurances about that.

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I’m thinking along the same lines as Rui. I don’t know if Lenovo ties the product key (generic subset) right into the BIOS like Dell does but it sounds something like that, therefore the OEM key was not in the proper range for that Lenovo and using the original key should make it good to go for good….but WGA is just unpredictable enough so that I can’t say that for sure.

So the OEM could be legit and would be fine in any non-manufacturer build.

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Good early Christmas morning to you, John.

Your question about being legal on your “doctored” machine has me thinking too about my machine. To make it a short story, if any set of keys says that it likes your machine and is accepted by the MGA, you are done and be it !

Now my story, I redid an Acer desktop that came with a Vista OEM OS of 32 bitness , I installed first a Win-7 of like bitness and used that provided keys on the label. Not the end of the story, I then over installed Win-7 in 64 bitness and I could not get the same keys accepted, brace yourself now, I used the keys for a Toshiba laptop running Win-7 and it took them. Bill Gates seems to be happy with that, I get all Updates too. If I use the command ” Validate “, it says that I am an honest fellow and the World smiles on me, hey, this is Christmas.

Short story: if once validated, accept the fact and do not loose any sleep over it, regardless of what/where/how you got it validated. I have no explanation for this.

Be good………..Jean.

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I’ve been called out to REPAIR several PC’s that were 100% legal, but WGA had reared its ugly head and told the user they were using an Illegal copy of windows. The quick fix was a twofold solution. First I ran a little routine to remove WGA from the computer, then I shut off Auto Updates. End of problem!

Most people in the world can get along nicely without ever another MS Update, till H*** freezes over. I know danged well, I can.

Happy New Year Mates!
The Doctor

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No Windows update? You want the customer to get malware?

I’ve been called out to REPAIR several PC’s that were 100% legal, but WGA had reared its ugly head and told the user they were using an Illegal copy of windows. The quick fix was a twofold solution. First I ran a little routine to remove WGA from the computer, then I shut off Auto Updates. End of problem!

Most people in the world can get along nicely without ever another MS Update, till H*** freezes over. I know danged well, I can.

Happy New Year Mates!
The Doctor

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No Windows update? You want the customer to get malware?

Actaully, MS security patches do not protect against Malware itself, only the vulnerabilities sometimes exploited by malware. If the use never connects to the Internet, then there really isn’t a reason to patch.

I myself only update my PCs two or three times a year. However, to say its OK to never patch is a bit reckless. The vulnerabilities and exploits are very real. The danger isn’t so much that it’ll cause problems with your PC, but that want your personal data.

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so what is the little routine to remove WGA

I’ve been called out to REPAIR several PC’s that were 100% legal, but WGA had reared its ugly head and told the user they were using an Illegal copy of windows. The quick fix was a twofold solution. First I ran a little routine to remove WGA from the computer, then I shut off Auto Updates. End of problem!

Most people in the world can get along nicely without ever another MS Update, till H*** freezes over. I know danged well, I can.

Happy New Year Mates!
The Doctor

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Thanks Roderunner for confirming use of wired connection when installing an OS.

I frequently (incorrectly) refer to LAN when I mean cable. I should have said “Declined to activate, which was not possible online because laptop was not connected to LAN by wireless or cable”. I was attempting to show that I had no connection to the internet so activation on line was impossible (I did not use phone or modem) – yet the instant after connecting to the internet I found it was activated. I had answered “Help protect your PC” – “Not right now”, “Connect to Internet” – “yes through LAN”. My check list had ready the question “Activate” – to which I intended to answer “No”; I was surprised that I wasn’t even asked the question. The next question was “Register” – “No”.

I know that online activation can be very quick, so perhaps the system was primed to activate automatically immediately it found an internet connection, however it declined to tell me until running “00be/msoobe/a” reported that Windows was already activated.

Thanks Rui, Byron, Jean and Dr Who for your suggestions. I asked Microsoft one more time at Genuine Microsoft Software – Diagnostic Site (http://www.microsoft.com/Genuine/diag/) if it was genuine, and it emphatically said yes, so I will stop worrying and apologise to the vendor!

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John, In the past, the amount of auto activations allowed was limited, then one had to call M Soft (toll free in UK) to do so. I think that has been changed as a clean install really speeds up a PC, even if only in use for a few months. Possible all the updates that don’t completely rewrite when installing. IF YOU GET ANY.

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I think I know the reason why WGA failed is because you key for xp pro is keyed for a sp2 installed. when you slip stream sp3 in there, the wga system will say there is mis-match disk to serial #. I’m very certain of this as I tried installing a oem xp pro w/sp3 disk with the key from a completely sp2 legit sticker. when i switch on a disk with only sp2, it validated with no problem. fyi, you actually can use the key on the xp pro sticker on the back of your thinkpad as long as it is for the same version and sp of xp. you actually can use a xp sp1 key on a sp2 disk. but xp sp3 disk only work with sp3 key. personally, i will use the stock xp install of Lenovo. It is the ONLY laptop manufacturer that don’t bloat up their install with junk. mind you, i only have experience with their business T and X series.

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After getting “stuck” with Windows XP original version key which wouldn’t allow update to SP2 several years ago, I bought a “Genuine” version directly from Microsoft.

Purchased a new system a few years ago with (ugh) Vista on it so XP was relegated to my backup system. After replacing a defective motherboard and slipstreaming SP3 I installed and activated XP with no problems.

Many of these problems could be eliminated if major vendors sold systems with no OS on them with a coupon permitting the buyer to purchase any retail version of Windows 7 at a discounted price within 30 days. Even better simply provide a retail install disk and key instead of an OEM key. M$ still gets their money.

BTW I have replaced Vista on both my main system and laptop with Win 7. I have two retail copies bought during a half-price sale in 2009. I have the install disks and product keys.

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After getting “stuck” with Windows XP original version key which wouldn’t allow update to SP2 several years ago, I bought a “Genuine” version directly from Microsoft.

Purchased a new system a few years ago with (ugh) Vista on it so XP was relegated to my backup system. After replacing a defective motherboard and slipstreaming SP3 I installed and activated XP with no problems.

Many of these problems could be eliminated if major vendors sold systems with no OS on them with a coupon permitting the buyer to purchase any retail version of Windows 7 at a discounted price within 30 days. Even better simply provide a retail install disk and key instead of an OEM key. M$ still gets their money.

BTW I have replaced Vista on both my main system and laptop with Win 7. I have two retail copies bought during a half-price sale in 2009. I have the install disks and product keys.

Not allowing you to update to sp2? What was the error msg? Any
How all my pc is now using win 7

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I found this to be an interesting topic; though I have been subscribing to the Widows Secrets for several years now and joined the lounge upon its inception here at Secrets I have never read much of them or posted in the lounge. However, this topic really gets to me due to one of my own experiences a few years ago. My wife owned a Gateway desktop that I decided to upgrade the HD on. I went out and purchased a WD 320GB EIDE to install into it. As soon as I installed it the problems reared their ugly heads. First I ran into a problem with the desktop recognizing the full capacity of the new HD. The problem was that the BIOS in that unit was older and did not have the capability to read the larger HD. I did not know a hek of a lot about anything back then and though I know a lot more now I learn something new every day. Another problem was that the recovery disc had been cracked in a move and I no longer had it to reinstall Widows XPsp2 on the computer. I did however have a Windows XP OEM disc but it did not have any service packs on it. I learned then that I needed an SP2 disc for it to work correctly. It turns out that XPsp2 has what ever it needs to utilize the larger HD; XPsp1 may have it but I am not certain about that one. I am sure somebody has a better way of doing what I did but what I did was make a 32GB NTF partition and installed XP. I used my key off of the Gateway and everything was fine. Microsoft validated it and all was well, or so I thought. Later I went and used Partition Commander to set up the HD the way I wanted it, next thing I know the box comes up and tells me that my hardware changed and my XP had to be re-certified so I did it. About that time is when I stated diving into the multi-boot thing and decided to use the Gateway to use as a guinea pig for my experiments. It turned into a nightmare; but I did learn. I started over and did the 32GB partition and installed Windows 2000 Pro on it; I then re-installed the XP and upgraded to SP2 as I had before and all went as planned. I was able to re-validate my key again and again, all was well. I now had my first multi-boot system and feeling somewhat large in certain areas of my anatomy and I do believe I even may have developed a somewhat of a pimpish strut as I walked around pleased with myself. Then it happened, we had a power surge where I lived and I do not know what happened but it screwed up my XP install. The darn thing worked fine with the W2Kpro but I was unable to fix XP. I did everything over from the start, hell I had my system down pat by now, yea right!!! When I went to re-validate XP this time I got the message that I had used up all of my allotted validates for my key but that I could get a new one by forking over $149+tax to MS. At first I got this sunken pit in my stomach, not about the thing with MS or even the freaking money (which I did not have at the time to spare for a new key) it was from what I knew was I you just leave it inevitable; that I like any other man with a woman was going to have to hear that speech that I had heard many times before through the years, “You think you’re so smart, why couldn’t you just leave it alone when you had it working!!!!?” I was frantic with fear, in a cold sweat while trying to keep her from finding out about my latest escapade to prove how great I was while I hopefully came up with a solution. I scoured the net and the P2P sites and came up with one; or shall I say, hypothetically came up with one. It was at this time that I hypothetically used this little program to validate my key on that box. I may have through the past several years used that program (which was written by one “FAR” smarter and greater than I will “EVER” be) to assist others in repairing their boxes with the key that was on the side of the box yet MS would not authorize the use of. Yet, if, as I say, I hypothetically did this, I “NEVER, EVER CHARGED a single unfortunate soul for the service of assisting them.
I know this is realistically overboard in length and your all more than likely bored, cursing, laughing, or something; that is if you even made it this far or if this even gets posted by the Lounge. However, that admitted to and offering up my most humble apology, I have a question or two for the “HEADS”. Such as, why on some OEM off the shelf boxes does the key that is on the side or bottom of the box “NOT MATCH” the key that is on the box embedded in the install? Second, why can you “sometimes” use that key that is installed on the system to do a clean install and then re-validate and also, “sometimes”, use the key on the side or bottom of the box to do the same thing? I have my own theories on this subject but I am curious what others may care to offer up on the subject.
God’s Speed to all.

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After about of year of use of a Dell Computer with Windows 7 installed. I start getting the message that my copy of windows was invalid. I ran the WGA Diagnostic tool(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012). It turned out I had a corrupted file. After going around and around with MS customer support, I finally had to do a reformat and reinstall of Windows 7. My solution is to avoid software that uses online activation if at all possible. I have removed all paid MS software from my computer except for Windows 7. I’m stuck with that for the time being.

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I had this problem once. I phoned up MS and a guy with an Indian accent gave me a new one without any problems. The cause of the problem, I can only guess, but one possibility is some hacker with a keygen may have got your number registered before you did.

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I can’t imagine that any sensible person would think that I’d just disable WGA and leave a computer defenseless against malware.
WGA has nothing to do with malware.
As a professional computer tech, I take that as an affront.

I provide every one of my customers with the very best FREE anti malware package that I can put together and even give them a booklet of printed instructions on how to keep the programs updated and how to run scans. I take computer security VERY seriously.
I also give them a Weekly Maintenance Routine to keep their PC’s running lean, clean and mean.

In the latest “Windows Secrets” newsletter, I loved the article on “Turning off Auto Updates”. The suggestion that they will do more harm than good is right on target.

This is an excerpt from that newsletter:

Microsoft’s automatic update is for chumps. And if anything, it’s gotten chumpier this past year. Anybody who tells you otherwise just hasn’t been paying attention.

Rumor around the internet is that MS is putting bugs in their updates for XP to try to get people to move on to Windows 7.
If that were true, that would definitely qualify as “Criminal” behavior.
Many of the older PC’s that still run XP, won’t even run Win-7 anyway. Or run it very poorly.

At this point in the game, worrying about WGA, Activation and all that #@$%, is pointless, at least for Windows XP.
I’m running XP-Pro-SP3 right now, and I love it! I also have Windows 7, Ultimate 64 on another HD, but I seldom go there. It’s just more trouble than it’s worth. By comparison to W-7, Windows ME was a piece of cake. Sorry if that offends anyone.

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor

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Many of the older PC’s that still run XP, won’t even run Win-7 anyway. Or run it very poorly.

Depends on what you mean by older. I think there’s a sweet spot, circa when the Athlon +2200 to 57FX ruled the land! I prefer Win 7 on those single core systems because it behaves almost exactly like XP does; and because its newer so its sort of a modernity update without any performance penalty. The key to this sweet spot is probably that I have all decent to very good old video cards in these systems so running and supporting Aero Glass is not an issue.

I’m in agreement with most everything else, though there isn’t much of a conspiracy gene in me, I do seem to see updates that make an XP system perform more like Win 7 when it comes to resource management, which I don’t like, after all it is the reason I run XP on all my high performance systems so it utilizes more resources when facing extended single purporse operations.

If you are suggesting that turning off auto updates in lieu of any updates at all at any time, that’s fine for an individual to make that decision (though some could argue that if one goes online with such a system, it is affecting the Internet and everything else there if its more vulnerable), but in the world of technical support that is a personal business, it does have to be labeled irresponsible behavior; affronts completely aside, one just can’t make that decision for a customer. Suggestions and conveying your personal feelings on such matters, which may in turn precipitate certain actions by the customer is different and fine by me, because then you’re standing by your reputation clear and simple.

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If you are suggesting that turning off auto updates in lieu of any updates at all at any time, that’s fine for an individual to make that decision (though some could argue that if one goes online with such a system, it is affecting the Internet and everything else there if its more vulnerable), but in the world of technical support that is a personal business, it does have to be labeled irresponsible behavior; affronts completely aside, one just can’t make that decision for a customer. Suggestions and conveying your personal feelings on such matters, which may in turn precipitate certain actions by the customer is different and fine by me, because then you’re standing by your reputation clear and simple.

What constitutes professional and responsible behavior is (at least in the absence of some recognized accrediting authority) pretty much a matter of opinion. If you meant the above as purely a statement of your personal opinion, that’s fine by me – but it came off as somewhat more presumptuous than that.

We kept our Win2K systems up to patch level (+/- a few months, anyway) until the patches ceased last summer (we also run XP, Vista, and Win7, but Win2K still does a perfectly acceptable job for some of our needs), but as far as I can tell it would have made no difference whatsoever had we not done so. It has been at least a half-dozen years since our anti-malware software has found anything to complain about (we also occasionally do on-line checks just for kicks), and we certainly don’t confine our on-line activities to the safer parts of the Internet.

That’s likely in large part because we use a hardware router (ShieldsUp! says we’re invisible and secure), don’t run anything we download without scanning it for malware first, and use Firefox to browse (I use NoScript but the rest of the family doesn’t), but the bottom line is that MS updates don’t seem to make any difference to our safety, hence supporting the contention that they’re not necessary for responsible net activity.

Of course, some people would assert that merely using ANY version of Windows on line (however up-to-date and armored it may be) constitutes irresponsible behavior. Again, though, that’s just an opinion.

(Sorry for being so late to this party – I’m about a week behind in reading WS so just saw the link there.)

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If you meant the above as purely a statement of your personal opinion, that’s fine by me – but it came off as somewhat more presumptuous than that

It was mildly presumptuous, I can’t think of anything non-Orwellian where its ok to make the decision for the customer. Replace dictate with suggest however and I see no problem, and one can even make the changes then with the customer’s consent.

I’ve had a couple of browser hijacks…in 2001…the last time malware has ever darkened my doorstep…I know what I’m doing when it comes to keeping badies out but I would never be so presumptuous as to set up anyone else the way I am setup. You’d know what I mean if you had some project or something that pretty much only you knew the ins and outs of. I know when to back out, what not to touch, what to ignore; and when. I make the occasional forays into dangerous territory, see and almost touch what’s trying to get on my system, comfortably step back and cut it off in mid-leap. At least 80% of customers could not do that, they need ALL the tools available…and they are still going to get infected at an enormous rate. Someone who lives and breathes power supply exhaust always forgets how in tune they are with the nature of computers, seeing obvious cause and reaction where others see nothing. At least I see that all the time…but I’m extremely introspective and analytical…not so good on the artistic side

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