Reactivating an XP OS

[descott12]

Hello all,
I just wanted to post this as I accidentally changed some hardware to try to get networking running in an XP VM. This triggered the need to reactivate XP and the suggested activation method goes online to do this...but my networking was down. This was a very important VM so I started to panic. The other option was to call a phone number and I thought there was no way the phone system would work for a 20 year old OS...but it did! You have to enter about a 100 digits and then re-enter about 30 more but it worked and was quite easy!

So best not to change hardware but if you do, there is a good chance you will be able to reactivate your OS, even a really old one.

There were a few posts about hacking the MAC address and copying over some activation file. I actually used that to get the OS going originally but maybe that wasn't necessary. Note that I don't know if you can re-activate it again or if this is a one-time deal. Anyway, I hope this helps somebody.

Cheers

[scottgus1]

Thanks for the info! Nice to know the phone system still works. The online reactivation servers have been turned off long ago by Microsoft, so phoning in was the only option available.

The concept of reactivation also applies to physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversions too.