SpAceTraNce

The Scenario: You do a ‘repair install’ for whatever reason. After the repair install you login to your account and before your desktop comes up you are greeted with a screen that says, “This copy of Windows must be activated with Microsoft before you can log on. Do you want to activate Windows now?” Fair enough, untill you click the “Yes” button…. then all that comes up is your desktop background from before. No activation screen… no icons.. you can’t even open task manager using the ctrl+alt+del keystroke.

I have encontered this many of times in my career. I have done some digging through the popular forums and untill today I haven’t found a fix. Today I came across a fix on MajorGeeks.com and it worked. This fix resets the 30 day grace period. This in turns allows windows to come up and allows you to activate the computer using the normal method.

The Fix:

1. Turn On your PC

2. Press F8 repeatedly and go to Safe Mode

3. Logon as per normal
(note: Administrator password is usually blank, but hopefully you know your password)

4. Allow the Desktop to fully load (answering “Yes” to continue into Safe Mode)
(note: This is just a long way of saying go to Safe Mode)

5. Click on Start – Run

6. Type in exactly: rundll32.exe syssetup,SetupOobeBnk (and click OK)
(note: one space, after “rundll32.exe ” also the Oo are two letter o’s in “oobe”; capitals and comma are important)

7. Wait a couple of seconds (although you will Not see any change)

8. Restart your PC normally (Start – Shutdown – Restart – Ok)

9. You are now able to go to Normal Mode again (For another 30 days !!!)

10. Install IE8, do not pass go do not install ie7, install ie8. that should solve not being able to run windows update and not being able to activate somehow it’s tied to the broken ie. Let me know if this works. Now do whatever you like, you’re back to Normal.

Source: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=190979