- Mar 13, 2015
- 11
- 0
- 4,510
So this has been a bit of an adventure, it's entirely possible somewhere along the line I screwed up something simple and that's why I'm going to proceed with a rundown of exactly what I've been up to with this computer.
The short form is,
When starting this PC, XP loads until the logon menu and then presents me with the message "A problem has prevented windows from accurately checking the status of this computer. To proceed your copy of windows must be activated with Microsoft. Do you want to activate Windows Now?" and a Yes/No. Clicking No just brings the message back around, clicking Yes loads the hill-and-sky background and a moveable mouse, but no icons appear, no taskbar, right click doesn't yield any menus and keyboard commands such as CTRL+ALT+DEL don't function either.
The long story is, (I'll try to bold the important stuff, make it a bit more skimmable
It's a work computer, and myself being the amateur computer guy at my work, it was passed to me to solve. Originally it was a dead power supply which was easy to diagnose and fix. After swapping the power supply however, neither monitor or keyboard were responding or receiving a signal. (Num Lock didn't flash it's LED when pressed, the monitor stayed insistent that it had no signal). So, I figured the motherboard must have been fried somehow by the PSU blowing, and replaced the motherboard. (will provide specs at the bottom of this entry) While swapping the board, I found out that while our old board had four DDR2 slots, this one had two DDR2 and two DDR3, so I had to drop a RAM DIMM, taking me from a 1GB and dual 512s to just the dual 512s. Obviously after the motherboard swap, it was necessary to re-install Windows XP (Service Pack 2) as per the boss's wish. The SATA drive wasn't recognized by Windows XP Set-Up, no I went into BIOS and changed the AHCI setting to IDE in hopes that it would find my drive. It did, and setup proceeded.
When asked if I wanted to repair the previous install they'd found, I agreed to repair instead of install a fresh version of XP. From here I made it all the way to the point where I gave it my OEM key and proceeded to finish the install. After that, I bumped into a different error: instead of fully booting, the computer opted to sit at the XP logo with "Please Wait..." underneath almost indefinitely. Running a repair from the XP set up disc solved this issue, but then led me to the one I have now (not suggesting it *caused* the hang on background issue, just saying that was the next one to come up.)
Stuff I've tried:
Changing the date in BIOS - http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/268304-windows-xp-a-problem-is-preventing-windows-from-accurately-checking-the-license
sounded similar to my issue so I figured I'd give it a shot. No change.
Booting in Safe Mode and pushing back the activation date - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-security/this-copy-of-windows-must-be-activated-before-you/387f3367-5fc4-4aa1-937d-6788a626029d
I should mention that the computer DOES boot in Safe Mode with no issues, however running this through Command Prompt made no change.
Uninstalling IE7/8 elements via Safe Mode - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-system/xp-hangs-on-startup-and-dialog-box-provides-the/f7cce2a4-b0db-4b8d-a6e1-812071bc759c
This sounded a bit bizarre to me, however when attempting to follow the poster's instructions here, I found folders named "ie7update" and "ie8update" instead of just "ie7" and "ie8". Opening the folders showed a blank screen, but looking at them in Properties showed they had multiple files and subfolders, one being roughly 700MB and the other being 200MB. When I ran a search (the old XP dog mascot, "would you like to look for files and folders or documents and pictures?" fella) I did find a handful of "spuninst.exe" but I didn't dare run them for not being able to trace their directory accurately.
It is a work computer, and we're fairly invested in not swapping the hard drive or wiping it because there's a point of sales program we're using that's exceedingly rare and hard to replace these days. Unfortunately, attempting a system restore is no dice, because despite my nagging everyone in staff, no one decided to set up a restore point and I lack(ed) the jurisdiction to. Unfortunately, for the next couple of hours, I'm not in front of the PC so it'll be a bit harder for me to answer your questions, but I will be present on the forums.
Here are the specs, as closely as I can recall them.
PSU - Thermalite TR2 600W
Motherboard - ASRock 960GC-GS FX
RAM - two sticks of 512MB DDR2
HDD - Seagate Barracuda 80GB
I appreciate any help you guys can provide.
The short form is,
When starting this PC, XP loads until the logon menu and then presents me with the message "A problem has prevented windows from accurately checking the status of this computer. To proceed your copy of windows must be activated with Microsoft. Do you want to activate Windows Now?" and a Yes/No. Clicking No just brings the message back around, clicking Yes loads the hill-and-sky background and a moveable mouse, but no icons appear, no taskbar, right click doesn't yield any menus and keyboard commands such as CTRL+ALT+DEL don't function either.
The long story is, (I'll try to bold the important stuff, make it a bit more skimmable
It's a work computer, and myself being the amateur computer guy at my work, it was passed to me to solve. Originally it was a dead power supply which was easy to diagnose and fix. After swapping the power supply however, neither monitor or keyboard were responding or receiving a signal. (Num Lock didn't flash it's LED when pressed, the monitor stayed insistent that it had no signal). So, I figured the motherboard must have been fried somehow by the PSU blowing, and replaced the motherboard. (will provide specs at the bottom of this entry) While swapping the board, I found out that while our old board had four DDR2 slots, this one had two DDR2 and two DDR3, so I had to drop a RAM DIMM, taking me from a 1GB and dual 512s to just the dual 512s. Obviously after the motherboard swap, it was necessary to re-install Windows XP (Service Pack 2) as per the boss's wish. The SATA drive wasn't recognized by Windows XP Set-Up, no I went into BIOS and changed the AHCI setting to IDE in hopes that it would find my drive. It did, and setup proceeded.
When asked if I wanted to repair the previous install they'd found, I agreed to repair instead of install a fresh version of XP. From here I made it all the way to the point where I gave it my OEM key and proceeded to finish the install. After that, I bumped into a different error: instead of fully booting, the computer opted to sit at the XP logo with "Please Wait..." underneath almost indefinitely. Running a repair from the XP set up disc solved this issue, but then led me to the one I have now (not suggesting it *caused* the hang on background issue, just saying that was the next one to come up.)
Stuff I've tried:
Changing the date in BIOS - http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/268304-windows-xp-a-problem-is-preventing-windows-from-accurately-checking-the-license
sounded similar to my issue so I figured I'd give it a shot. No change.
Booting in Safe Mode and pushing back the activation date - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-security/this-copy-of-windows-must-be-activated-before-you/387f3367-5fc4-4aa1-937d-6788a626029d
I should mention that the computer DOES boot in Safe Mode with no issues, however running this through Command Prompt made no change.
Uninstalling IE7/8 elements via Safe Mode - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-system/xp-hangs-on-startup-and-dialog-box-provides-the/f7cce2a4-b0db-4b8d-a6e1-812071bc759c
This sounded a bit bizarre to me, however when attempting to follow the poster's instructions here, I found folders named "ie7update" and "ie8update" instead of just "ie7" and "ie8". Opening the folders showed a blank screen, but looking at them in Properties showed they had multiple files and subfolders, one being roughly 700MB and the other being 200MB. When I ran a search (the old XP dog mascot, "would you like to look for files and folders or documents and pictures?" fella) I did find a handful of "spuninst.exe" but I didn't dare run them for not being able to trace their directory accurately.
It is a work computer, and we're fairly invested in not swapping the hard drive or wiping it because there's a point of sales program we're using that's exceedingly rare and hard to replace these days. Unfortunately, attempting a system restore is no dice, because despite my nagging everyone in staff, no one decided to set up a restore point and I lack(ed) the jurisdiction to. Unfortunately, for the next couple of hours, I'm not in front of the PC so it'll be a bit harder for me to answer your questions, but I will be present on the forums.
Here are the specs, as closely as I can recall them.
PSU - Thermalite TR2 600W
Motherboard - ASRock 960GC-GS FX
RAM - two sticks of 512MB DDR2
HDD - Seagate Barracuda 80GB
I appreciate any help you guys can provide.
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