Windows XP - Installing the new Service Pack 1 despite a stolen key

Microsoft's promise to refine and perfect the copy protection of Windows operating systems continued to prevail this year and last year with product activation. However, the ingenious system lost out to the S.A.D team, who cracked the WPA (Windows Product Activation) mechanism before the premiere of Windows XP. The WPA, which creates a key by assembling the hardware and encoding it, can be carried out over the Internet or by telephone. You enter this key, which is also called a hardware hash, and receive your activation code.

This procedure was used for the Corporate version was removed from Windows XP because it was used in networks. Here they took pity on the troubled network administrator, who had to activate 45 computers, for example, and removed the WPA. These volume license versions have now ended up on the Internet and with them some legal product keys, which are now in circulation and have therefore become illegal. Microsoft tracked down most of these illegal product keys and used a new trick: The new Service Pack 1 could not be installed with such a key (the best known: FCKGW-RHQQ2....).

Windows XP product key for Service Pack 1 activation

Unfortunately, administrators and major customers whose original key has been distributed are now in trouble if they want to use Windows XP Service Pack 1 in their company. In most cases, direct contact with Microsoft helps here, but their service times are not acceptable for many companies, which is why Windows Tweaks is now providing them with instructions on how to change the product key. We hereby support owners or network administrators who have the original version and not pirates. You can replace your key with one from the Internet, which has not yet ended up on Microsoft's index - this is legal, as you have the original version. And this is how you proceed:

1. Click in succession on Start/Execute and type in the command line regedit in.

After you have finished with ENTER confirmed, the editor for editing the Windows registration.

2. Double-click to navigate through the path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WPAEvents and save this key as a backup registry file by selecting it and clicking on File/Export click.

Now you must enter a name such as Registration security WPA events and enter the storage location. If something goes wrong, you can go to this location and double-click on the file. After the two confirmations, everything is back to normal.

3. In the right-hand pane, double-click on the value OOBETimer and change a few characters. For example, replace an ff with a 01 - This is enough for the Windows activation technology to be changed and the operating system to provide a new activation.

4. Click again on Start/Execute. But this time you write the command C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\OOBE\msoobe.exe /a inside.

Please change the drive letter and the name of the Windows folder.

5. The Windows XP activation window appears, which is the sign for you that you can Yes, activate Windows by telephone via customer service and mark with Next confirm. Click here below on Change product key.

6. Now enter your new Windows product key here and confirm with OK. Now you can repeat step 3 again - this time the message that Windows XP has been activated should appear.

It is now possible to install Windows XP Service Pack 1 on computers with the corporate version without any major problems.

NOTE FOR NEW PUBLICATION: This article was produced by Sandro Villinger and comes from the Windows Tweaks archive, which has been built up since the late 1990s.