Windows XP Activation w/ reformats

[psychosis]

First post but an important one:
I reformat my computer constantly, security reasons... etc. Windows XP give you a serial that you can only use about 3 times. What gives? If I format my computer 3 times in one year then I use up my serial number? I read in some places that one can copy the WPA.DBL file but the RAM size has to the be the same on the other computer or something? Can someone/anyone help me with this problem... ?

-psych

 

[Seloce]

you can just call microsoft and they will give you the unlock code. they do not ask for any personal information. all they ask is why you're reformatting again.

for simplicity, I would recommend doing the XP install and then immediately ghosting an image of it. It saves all the phone calls to Microsoft.

 

[psychosis]

thanks for the reply guys... hey seloce, how do i ghost an image of it? thanks again!

 

[microsoftne]

microsoft has a db of over 80,000 keys, when you try to activate it checks against versions of these.
reinstall xp without reactivating

If you were to reinstall Windows XP, you normally must re-activate it as well, even if your hardware is unchanged... luckily, there's a way around this.

First, your hardware between reinstalls must NOT change..

XP keeps the activation information in a file named "wpa.dbl", which can be found in _:\WINDOWS\System32\

After your activating Windows XP, back this file up to a floppy or some other type of media.

Now, if you ever need (or want) to reinstall Windows XP, go through the whole procedure as you normally would. Once you get into Windows itself, copy the file from your media back into _:\WINDOWS\System32\... You may need to be in safe mode to do this,