WINXP activation

[IBMan]

ok, so im on my grandmas computer, i reformatted the hard drive about a month and a half ago, i wondered if it had ever been activated because when i was on it after i formatted the hard drive and installed windows for about an hour installing software it never said anything about having to activate windows, so i went to c:\windows\system32 looking for wpa.dbl and wpa.bak, i saw wpa.dbl but no wpa.bak which means that it hasnt been activated. What makes this happen, i've seen it more than once but its like the first time you install or reinstall xp you dont have to activate it..it makes no sense but what makes it not happen?

kinda confusing if u ask me

 

[office politics]

http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

 

[IBMan]

that helps quite a bit, so i guess its legal to junk a computer and buy a system and put xp on it? thats cool, but i guess i dont see how it tells what hardware the system came with, dont they just make an image of the os and reburn billions of copies? or do they give an image to each computer company and they add information to the image as to what harddware the computer comes with and distribute it that way?

 

[office politics]

there are copies of xp without activation. Prolly only for volume licenses.

 

[IBMan]

thats cool...so is this probably why huge networks of computers(such as my school) all buy computers that are very similar?(all compaq/hp), most of the workstations have the same or VERY close to the same software and hardware ALL running windows xp pro, doesnt really matter just wondering, anyway thanks for the help.

 

[office politics]

yup and they're prolly using sysprep installations on all their machines.