worried: windows activation error

[cyberthug]

let's make it short shall we?

have a winXP sp1a CD, slipstreamed SP2 onto, made unattended. Been testing for over a month, on VMware, windows is fine, logs onto the net, updates, does NOT ask for activation.

I decided to burn my unfinished windows as i'm about to reformat my HD to start playing with a clean installation of windows.

After installing,

-1st boot: hal.dll missing/corrupt msg during boot up. so i boot into dos, replace it with a new hal.dll from the CD. Doesn't solve the problem.

-Reformatted, installed windows. After 1st boot up, logging into windows, when entering windows, gives a funny msg window saying error creating user profile, but windows managed to create a default profile [30 second count down here]. But still doesn't log into windows. Gives same error about twice or thrice,

then a msg titles Windows Activation Error, saying windows has encountered a prroblem while encountering activation.

CANNOT GET PAST THIS POINT!

Formatted properly, deleted partition, formatted FAT32, formatted full NTFS, but nothing works..

[i should mention that i did the 'check if your windows is legal' test from MS online before formatting. it failed.]

So i'm now using my WinXP sp1a, and upgrading with that. Anyone hav an idea whatt the #%@#!@% this is about???

i haven't yet gotten arround to installing VMware and testing the unattended again to see if it gives an error, but don't think it will..

hope someone has an explaination! i'm really angry, all this work making a nice unatttended, and might not even work!!

[ChunkDog]

[i should mention that i did the 'check if your windows is legal' test from MS online before formatting. it failed.]

All that does is verify your Product Key with microsoft and tells you if it's legit or not. I beleive you might have a warez copy and should buy a retail version. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty **** sure that all microsoft checks is your Windows Product Key.

[prathapml]

I think MS checks for the PID (productID) - the series of numbers that you see below the "Registered To:" details in System Properties.

@cyberthug

How did you slipstream? Did you use nLite along the way? And if so, then what components did you remove? (you should not remove OOBE if you don't have a VLK CD).

[cyberthug]

i didn't use nlite to slip stream... i'm not sure what i used actually.. it's been long! think it was justa small proggie for slipstreaming only. i've used nlite to remove a few things, but i'm definately sure i didn't remobe OOBE...

about MS checking just the PID, yep.. i read and made sure that they ONLY say that they check that.. but after doing that, then restarting, and all those freakin problems!!! i really feel like they did MORE than just check the PID!!! lol.. ofcourse... i'm hoping that i'm wrong! it's the only explaination i can come up with!

EDIT: it works perfectly in VMware! conects to the net everything!!

piece of crap's got me stumped!

guess i'll have to burn another copy and try it out on my space HD!!!

[Ge0ph]

Check you memory. This is the kind of stuff I see when memory is going bad.

[cyberthug]

i do have a low class memory i must admit..

but it's been just fine during anything and everything else!

I though maybe it was b'coz i had overclocked my system (mite be causing cachinig errors or mem errors) but that wasn't it either!

it may have been my ntosknrl.exe hack. It wasn't perfectly working; had color distortion etc.. but it worked enuf to get thru to windows, so i'm not too sure.

guess if no one's seen this before, i'm gonna have to reinstall windows (NOt on a virtual machine) with my finalized unattended CD with better kernel file.

i truely hope i NEVER see that **** error again!