SharePoint Joel's SharePoint Land

Ok.  Sorry if this is off topic.  I just wasted 3 hours of my life and activation product support was not helpful.  Surprised?

 

Good news...  I found a cool workaround that I wanted to share.  Something that hopefully product support will read and include in their steps.

 

I was activating a copy of XP that had essentially went past the 30 days, so I couldn't get past the activation screen... been there?

 

I put in the product key and tried to activate over the internet... invalid key.  Tried to do it over the telephone.  The number that was generated... invalid key.  I talk to support, key is good.  They give me another key (I don't know how I got to this point, cause I guess this wasn't suppose to happen).  After going through the steps above about 3 times, I noticed a link on the page that went to somewhere on the internet.  There was NO WAY I thought that link would actually open up a browser... but it did!  The page it took me to had an option to do "Validation" to check to see if you had a valid copy.  I ran through the wizard and it said it was valid and activated.  The computer was still in a wierd state, but I saw a link to install Defender.  If figured that would never work.  After defender installs, the wierdness of having no bars goes away and XP starts up!!!  I'm now in a valid XP.  I was at the point of being sent back and forth between HP and Microsoft first levels of support because I wasn't going to spend $59 to have someone do "Technical Support." 

 

I hope this story helps someone.  If you're wondering why I'm activating Windows XP.... If you don't already know, don't ask me. :)  I'm sure Jerry Seinfeld knows.