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Activation after Unattended Install


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Hi,

I have a Dell PC with XP Pro Pre-installed. Over years, I have changed the Harddisk, RAM, DVD Drive, BIOS, CMOS Battery, etc.

After every reformat, I call up Microsoft and ask them to activate my PC which they have been kind enough to oblige, so far. Since I have long crossed the automatic activation method counts.

Recently, I learnt about nLite and UA Installation and I created a great UA CD for my PC. However, I am not able to make it activate automatically. I tried both the methods - Backup Activation Method & OEMBIOS Method, provided in Guide To UnAttended Windows Installation

Can somebody please guide me how to get this going or tell me where I going wrong? After the most recent activation (3 Days Ago) through telephone, I have copied and kept separately WPA.DBL & WPA.bak and OEMBIOS.BIN, OEMBIOS.CAT, OEMBIOS.DAT & OEMBIOS.SIG.

Thank for your help in Advance!

Mahesh Kumar

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i tried those methods and they didnt work for me either. something else that didnt work for me but you might wanna try. there are some generic keys listed by microsoft as pre-activation keys for just this sort of thing. They are supposed to be activationless but I have tried them with no luck. Maybe you'll hav ebetter luck or someone else might have the solution.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457078.aspx

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Here are some OEMScan addons that will do exactly what you want:

http://siginetsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=541

There is tons of info there that will get you what you need.

You need the oembios files for your computer. Which you can get here:

http://oembios.net

Plus you will need an slp Product Key for Dell. It is not the product key on the sticker of your computer. It is the product key that dell uses on the system when it is installed at the factory.

Edited by Siginet
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Here are some OEMScan addons that will do exactly what you want:

http://siginetsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=541

There is tons of info there that will get you what you need.

You need the oembios files for your computer. Which you can get here:

http://oembios.net

Plus you will need an slp Product Key for Dell. It is not the product key on the sticker of your computer. It is the product key that dell uses on the system when it is installed at the factory.

Thank You! I will try the OEMScan method. How/ Where do I get the slp Product Key for Dell?

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Are you using a Dell XP recovery CD? If so the SLP Product Key is located in the I386 folder in the WINNT.SIF file under [userData] -> Product Key=

If not, here's a link with SLP's for most major royalty manufactures.

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/showthread.php?t=2602

And here is some information from Microsoft that you might find helpful called "Preserving OEM Pre-Activation when Re-installing Windows XP"

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457078.aspx

Edited by Rich_Weiss
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Are you using a Dell XP recovery CD? If so the SLP Product Key is located in the I386 folder in the WINNT.SIF file under [userData] -> Product Key=

If not, here's a link with SLP's for most major royalty manufactures.

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/showthread.php?t=2602

And here is some information from Microsoft that you might find helpful called "Preserving OEM Pre-Activation when Re-installing Windows XP"

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457078.aspx

Thank you for your response. I have downloaded the OEMBIOS files, obtained the SLP. But honestly not sure what I am supposed to do. Can you please advise or direct me to where a lot more detailed instructions are given as to how to use this information towards creating unattended activation.

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  • 3 months later...

I would add that the problem of retaining the activation doesn't seem to be limited to OEM systems.

I have a homebuilt on an ASUS motherboard with a copy of Windows XP Pro from an Action Pack subscription. During a recent reinstall I had hoped to retain the activation by restoring wpa.dbl. It failed but I figured it may have been because I had made a lot of system changes over the years, including activating several MS-Office products. I activated my new reinstall with MS immediately after the install because MS prevents downloading hotfixes till after activation. Then I copied the fresh wpa files (dbl and bak) and put them into my unattended install master for future use and proceeded with the rest of the install. Unfortunately, an old rogue application that was early on in my install blew up the installation but I did not discover the problem till very much later. By that time trying to revert to one of the earlier backups just created a mess so I was forced to go back to a fresh reinstall. I formatted the disk as a quick way to clean it and reinstalled from the unattended install which now had a nice clean wpa.dbl. Upon restart I was told that immediate activation was required in order to login. (In fact a second attempt to login does work but activation is required within 30 days.) Just as annoying was that while backup could restore from any of the previous backups of the original install, it would not correct the activation issue so a further activation was required in order to continue. One thing I did notice was that the activation period (30 days following the base install) was shortened to 27 days immediately after reverting to the backup taken just after the previous re-install. This highlights that there is activation information/data being saved somewhere that even reinstalling System State cannot bypass.

Clearly there is more to preserving the activation than just recovering the wpa files. While I understand MS's need to use activation, there should be some way to permit legitimate reinstallation in the same environment without reducing the count of the activations.

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