My trouble with WGA
Last month (June '06), my computer died (fried caps on the motherboard) just after the 2nd Tuesday updates from MS. Ok lets get into my junk box and cobble something that will work (at least for now). Disassemble the box looking for other problems lets see...
Memory 2 sticks DDR 333 512 Megs OK
Motherboard K7S5A with athlon 1.1Meg Crispy caps splattered on board NG
Video card NVIDIA 5600 Ultra OK
Sound card Audigy 2 OK
TV tuner card Win TV Go OK
HD #1 120 GB OK
Partitioned as (1: ntfs XP home, 2: ntfs XP pro, 3: vfat32 win98SE)
Box with PS it was a little warm in there with lots of power hungry parts...
Replace with larger box
Junk box parts:
Motherboard K7S5A with Duron 1.2Meg not too bad one-step down on CPU
1 step up on speed
Larger case with PS OK
Reassemble machine...
Power up ... using the XP loader
Partition one XP home (with Junes updates) complains that it's a pirate copy of windows and will not work after 3 days unless I buy a genuine copy of windows... Ok do windows activation wizard ... attempt failed... attempt failed... attempt failed... Grrr!!
Power up... using the XP loader
Partition two XP Pro (without Junes updates) complains that it needs to be activated or the computer will stop working in 30 days ... Hmm! ... Ok do windows activation wizard ... thank you for activating windows.
Same hardware... almost the same updates (missing june) and very different responses from the OS... windows WGA program?
Call tech support ... need name, address, credit card number?... I hang up!
Call the 800 number for activation,
Start loop
(answer the call automatically put me on hold drop call)
Repeat intermittently for four hours!!!
answer the call put me on hold...start the activation dialog... read the string (in 5 letter bytes) ... read the string (in 5 letter bytes) repeat as needed. Type the 25 digit number in re-confirm the number...
press enter success !
Partition one now works normally (did not have to re-install programs)
Partition two now works normally (did not have to re-install programs)
All is good with the world (did you know if I can find a newer motherboard [cheap!])