Activation - Workaround If you are doing a repair reinstall of XP on the same hardware, you can back up the activation status and then restore it after you run the repair install of the OS. To save the activation status, back up the wpa.dbl file from the %systemroot%\system32 folder to a floppy disk.
After the repair install of the OS is complete, start in Minimal Safe mode. Open the \%systemroot%\system32 folder. Rename wpa.dbl to wpa.noact. Copy the backed up wpa.dbl file to the system32 folder. Reboot your system.
This isn't a hack to avoid activating installations and will work only on the same hardware for an XP installation that you've already activated.
