Help! XP won't let me in!

[jayroller]

Hi guys, just wondering if anyone can throw a solution for my little problem at me. I was booting 3 o/s's, Mandrake 9.2, XP and Win 2k3, with grub being the first point of contact for selecting linux/windows, then selecting windows takes me in to the ms boot menu. All was well and good, until I decided to install FreeBSD 5.1. I changed the linux partition to freebsd native, and installed. The install went well, and on rebooting I now had (what passes for) freebsd's boot manager as first point of contact. Freebsd boots fine, and when I select win 2k3 from ms's bootloader, it works fine, but xp boots to the login screen (autologon enabled), just begins to load the desktop, and come up with "WPA. A problem is preventing windows from accurately checking the licence for this computer. ErrorCode 0x80090006". Now as far as I can tell, this problem is caused by something to do with the target partition size. But as I haven't changed any partition sizes, merely changed the format, I don't understand it! I can't understand whats changed, so's I can try and fix it! I found a workaround on the MS website, deleting a couple of registry keys, but those keys dont appear in my registry! Before I put mandrake back on and hope that sorts it out, anyone have any ideas? I'm as interested in what's caused it nearly as much as how to solve it, so anything is welcome.

(I wasn't sure where to post this, here, Linux or software, but went with here as its xp that doesn't work )

[rik]

Found others on Annoyances.org having the same type issues with the same message.

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/r1039715391

Quoting from that page: "Same thing happened to me after resizing and moving my system partition w/ acronis partitioner. I thought i was all smart too for adding an entry in the boot.ini file that would reflect my new set up. i hadnt planned on any microsoft shinnanigans. I did a google search and it appears windows doesnt like to boot a partition that has changed size. I dont know if your problem is related, but this is what happened to me ... "

Hope this helps to answer your question as to what may be causing it but I'm afraid I don't have a solution.

[jayroller]

Thanks Rik, it got me going in the right direction! Apparently, this problem is the result of the hardware ID on the installation being different from the hardware hash calculated for the current hardware (not sure how or why, as like I say, the only thing I changed was the filesystem of one partition from linux to bsd). It looks like the only solution is a repair install, (just in case anyone else ever gets this error.) Oh well, that'll keep me busy tomorrow. And, just in case anyone is wondering, no- FreeBSD wasn't worth all this hassle. That'll learn me.....

<EDIT> Hmm, another site suggests that it could be caused by a change in the registry (here, about 2 clicks down) - I used a program called Registry Defragment from http://www.elcor.net/ on XP just before I rebooted to install FreeBSD. The further thought now occurs that maybe when it rebooted after the defrag, because I didnt allow XP to boot straight away, to save/replace/do whatever with the registry, I may have caused this. Anyone know if this could be caused by a reg. problem? I backed up the registry beforehand, but - dammit! - I used the same program to backup the reg, and it's created a few extensionless files that don't seem to be any use withiot the proggy (which of course I cant use cos I cant get in to XP)