XP Product Activation???

[SpuffMonkey]

Hi - 2003 with XP SP2 - several of our PCs have just started coming up with errors about "Windows Product Activation" - saying that there is an error which is preventing windows fron checking the license for this computer.

These are all built (via Ghost) using VLKs - which I thought didn't require activation, and have been running OK for a while - the actual Ghost build is from last September sometime.

After this error has shown up once, the machine just goes into a reboot loop, and you can't get in at all as Admin or in safe mode.

A complete rebuild seems to fix it (for the moment).

Anybody got any ideas??

[Michael]

Have you ever visited Windows Update manually on these machines?

[SpuffMonkey]

Wouldn't have thought so - why?

[Gibbo]

Sounds like a fault on the hard drive. I had a sector error on my HDD last year which brought up this error. Check the event log and you'll see a file it's trying to access.

Try a CHKDSK /R to repair the disk and hopefully move the file to an undamaged part of the disk.

[Michael]

Wouldn't have thought so - why?

Well visiting Windows Update will download Windows Genuine Advantage. Windows doesn't download it itself and I presume you're using WSUS to control/distribute updates to your domain?

Gibbo might be right also. There might be a problem with your original image, but if most machines are working fine, then I would of thought your image should be fine!

[SpuffMonkey]

OK - no we don't allow people to update manually - and no we don't WSUS either - we update through a series of build through the year - so we know things aren't going to "break". Doesn't look like a HD prob either - as we've had 4 PCs in one corridor go today - which I think looks like some wierd activation thing - specially as I think its about 2 months since their last rebuild...Still looking...

[FN-GM]

I have heard people have had problems like this before with ghost. When do you get the error when you logon?

[strawberry]

i had a similar issue a while ago, i managed to add a vlk changing script to our startups which worked a treat. Obvisouly i could get into windows though, which seems to be the biggie for you.

[jsnetman]

We get similar problems here; from time to time some machines display the Windows Genuine Logo reporting the machines aren't validated. Most of the time a couple of reboots clears this problem and on rare occasions a rebuild is necessary. We also use ghost but have just moved to WDS and only rebuilt a handful of machines so far with WDS so cannot report if the source of the problem is ghost. It's a strange one but not serious enough so far for me to investigate why.

[FN-GM]

We get similar problems here; from time to time some machines display the Windows Genuine Logo reporting the machines aren't validated. Most of the time a couple of reboots clears this problem and on rare occasions a rebuild is necessary. We also use ghost but have just moved to WDS and only rebuilt a handful of machines so far with WDS so cannot report if the source of the problem is ghost. It's a strange one but not serious enough so far for me to investigate why.

This might be handy for the future

Reset Windows Genuine Advantage Validation - EduGeek.net Wiki