Activate Windows Bypass

[Kimbery Challacombe]

Theregular" methods provided with XP (phone and online) don't work anymore. The phone number is not valid for activation anymore (I tried the German one) and the online activation does not work either (in a quick test within a DMZ other protocols like ICMP or HTTP worked fine when I accessed an internet server).

The latest question/answer I could find here on superuser is this one: XP Activation and Dual Booting which doesn't provide an answer to my question. In addition the question asks only if it can be done in general not how (neither does the existing answer say how), and about other problems (dual boot), so I decided to post the question again as specific question just about the activation process.

The solutions can be a workaround (disabling the activation check), but for security reasons, it shouldn't contain a binary download. Preferably it also shouldn't require a network/internet connection. Although there is no way around using WinXP, I want to minimize security risks.

EDIT1: Since quite a few people asked, please note why (in my opinion) this question is not a duplicate of XP Activation and Dual Booting, please see my explanation above. I made a thorough explanation in meta here.

EDIT3: please be aware that running an outdated OS without security updates poses security risks explained here as BurceWayne points out correctly. Therefore, if possible you should change/upgrade the OS of your device. However in some cases it's not an option to change to a different OS, e.g. because certain drivers/HW/SW is only compatible with Win XP.

Calling the current MS activation number for a product still in support (e.g. for activation for Win7) and choosing "Other Products" in the voice menu. This is my preferred one since you don't have to tamper with the system. In my case (Nov 2019) I followed the link to the Microsoft Licensing Activation Centers worldwide telephone numbers.

Deleting the value of the OOBETimer key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/WPAEvents/OOBETimer) and starting the activation via command prompt: msoobe /a. This will disable the activation requirement for good but might cause issues (although I haven't found any yet) (source)

You need to download Neo-Desktop/WindowsXPKg, select the phone activation in Windows and run the tool to create the confirmation ID. Detailed instructions are given in the readme section of the tool on the GitHub site. (source)

This link just allows you to manually activate the the installation. So you select activate via phone option, then your XP box activation screen will give you a set of numbers. You enter these numbers into the site and the site gives you the response numbers to enter into the XP installation that you are needing to activate. Then you click on "next" and the activation completes.

So there is no way that this could contain malware or virus's because nothing is installed or run on the box that you are activating, unlike the other options listed here that involve running scripts to by-pass the activation process.

I am just giving my experience here; I had a box belonging to a friend of mine that somehow got into an activation loop (even though it had previously been activated for years), and I got the PC activated using the link. And I did so by following the standard Microsoft activation screens.

A wildly wrong date will break anything that uses ssl/tls, as certificates will be assumed to be either expired (if the date is in the future) or not yet valid (if the date is in the past). This apparently includes windows activation.

I just successfully activated an old copy of Windows XP I had installed using the toll free U.S. phone number listed in the activation dialog (888-571-2048), so it's possible the issue was with the German number and not phone activations in general.

As part of the call, they provided me with an online activation link, which allowed me to activate my copy online. After providing the link, I was instructed to hang up the call. I was able to enter the information from the activation dialog into the online form, and enter the resulting activation code into the activation dialog. This successfully activated my installation Windows XP.

In fact the last time I had to touch Windows XP was preparing for labs of an archaeological course where we're taught about 8086 assembly (Intel Microprocessors), and I just applied a random solution that I found online to activate the Windows XP in my virtual machine.

Hi friends,

I converted an acronis tib backup image to vmdk vmware.the operating system is windows server 2003. after the conversion i could the vmdk file but when starting the page of activation windows appears.i used the windows to access to the desktop.i installed a software to retrieve the product key of the windows i got it .but i can not activate the windows.how can i do it?

Thanks dbeato for your help ,it is the first time I encountered this problem,I had never activated windows with phone,so I dont know this procedure,when i run my virtual machine i got windows product activation:th

Did you get it activated? Usually when activation fails, it gives you the option to activate by phone and provides a phone number. If you are not getting that, please post the exact error message you are getting or a screen shot.

thanks Da_Schmoo,yes I get the option to activate by phone and they provide me a phone number,what are the next steps when i will call the phone number ,will I be able to use the same product as the physical server which i have?.

ring the number and use your phone to answer the questions (it is a robot) it will ask some yes/no questions then for the long number in short parts then it will give you out another long number which you input and it should work.

Try to re activate it first then if that fails you may need to go for plan B or C.

If your original hardware is still running then it is better to do a live convert to VMware (installs an agent on the original and writes direct to a VMware host) P2V it. than to do so from TIB (I am assuming the original has crashed and burned) the line between new hardware and a repair is rather blurry really, how many parts constitutes a new hardware? as the others have said it is perfectly ok to remove it pop on a hypervisor and put it back on same box. does not make any sense really.

Note: if by pressing WinKey+u it opens another window named "Narrator" then, in order to get the "Microsoft narrator" window, you have to right-click that window's title-bar and to choose "About narrator" pop-up menu.

Thanks for Your Help Bro. your fully explained activation bypass method beats those half done gimmicks that oftentimes fails to work, this is my third yet successful attempt because i've must've done something right!!

Hi Brotha...it may be 4 years since you commented here, but I was able to use your instructions to resurrect my antique pc (running XP SP3) that I did some part swapping to troubleshoot, and wound up having to reactivate, which was unsuccessful by ME. 30 days is now history. Kudos man.

Worked at first. I used it for a couple weeks. Something must have updated on XP on auto-updates. I have set the registry but now I still get the Activation window and when I go into it, it says I'm already activated. When I look at the registry key, it is as you suggested and permissions as you suggested. There must be something else now.

I suppose you have WinXP, right?

Also make sure you are logged on with an Windows user that has administrative rights on that system, otherwise I don't think you can see the Permission submenu where you can select the SYSTEM user/group.

So, can you see the Permission submenu like in the image bellow?

-10-25-19h04m/Windows-XP-Professional.png

i had google chrome as default . it worked to "dload" c:program filesinternet exploreriexplore.exe then open it and it launched

then i typed c: and it let me run the darn driver install for LAN so i could activate online.

IT WORKED..i set everything back in regsitry before doing online activation.

i had dloaded driver for it and saved to c: from hirensbootcd.org

Thanks.. sorta

I bought a second hand Windows XP to dual boot on my mac computer. I would love to buy a brand new copy but of course it is far too old.

It installed and worked fine. The product key worked during installation. However it won't let me activate it and now it says I need to activate it in 2 days to keep using it. This is despite having followed your methods above. All I can think is I accidentally left the computer connected to the internet and it did an auto update or something. It is really frustrating that I payed for a copy of windows xp and now it has stopped working and I lost all my installed programs. I can't get windows 7 or 8 as the programs I want to run won't work and I don't even know if windows 7 or 8 would work well on my mac.

If you are within those 30 days then the "You are within those 30 days time limit" should tinker the thing. As long as you are withing that period, if you block your registry (that key) then Windows cannot write to it anymore. So even if those 30 days have passed, maybe it will bother you with that nasty reminder but...it should not be able to do too much about it.

Hi Eugen. Thank you for the information. I tried your method before the 30 days were up. The only thing that was unclear was the part with "edit the OOBETimer key value and set its value to "ff d5 71 d6 8b 6a 8d 6f d5 33 93 fd""

The existing value had 2 lines with 0000 in front. I deleted everything and I was left with a line of 0000. While imputing the new value, it started generated numbers that I could not delete.

I inputed the value you mentioned and clicked saved. and continued to the next steps, without a problem

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