That is right. It is about to go the way of the dodo and I just decided to reinstall it, well bloody stupid me.

Anyway, I reinstalled XP as I wanted a clean install and I entered my number and phoned up. Well the woman tells me that she cannot give me a number... So I tried again and the same thing.
What this boils down to is that I am wondering if anyone has any clue how to bypass this piss poor Microsoft screw-up.
I have (had) it on a VM to play a few games like Dungeon Siege, Splinter Cell that take too long to get running on win7+

Is there a simple way to enter a key into the system that will allow me to continue to use XP indefinitely or a reliable crack that I could look into?
First is more preferable as this will never see the internet, but if I can reliably bypass this I could always reinstall at a later date without any problems.
I am just putting it into a Virtual machine so I can play games so it just needs to be long term active. I have looked online, but I am unsure of a few of the supposed "bypasses" and the way I did this last time required me to reset the timer, but that becomes a chore to remember to do every 6 months.


Included is a photo (blanked) to prove I actually own the XP license they are now refusing to accept.

If I remember correctly, the sticker on the box isn't necesarily the one used for installation, and may not even be valid for installation. There are applications that find which key is actually used, but if you've nuked and paved the machine for Windows 7, you're out of luck with those (you should have fetched the XP key before you nuked the OEM installation to replace it with 7).

Since you are using a notebook, didn't you get a recovery disk with it? That should enable you to re-install the OS and restore the notebook to its default state. Alternatively you can search for a Windows XP Loader but I can't provide you with a link as it is not the legal way to do it.

I have no idea why your serial number didn't work during installation. It doesn't use the Internet during installation.

On the other hand, if it's Windows Update you're trying to do (after succesfully installing the OS), then that's another matter.

The description indicates that it failed during activation, since that is where Windows provides phone numbers etc. for activating manually.

For reference the Windows XP installer will reject the key if it is from a different channel (e.g. OEM key with Retail disc) or the wrong edition (e.g. Home key with Professional disc). Vista and later simplify this; OEM and Retail can install from the same disc and the channel and edition can be changed very easily if necessary.

That is bad advice as almost no game will work on that.

You can manually enter a product key if that is an option, it will work as long as you have a valid product key:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/productkeysactivation/ht/changexpkey.htm

I believe the woman on the telephone gives you two options, sometimes you have to pick the other for her to give a key though it might be different now when they abandoned xp. I had to try two or three times i believe.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the XP Mode virtual machine can be imported into VMware Player. I haven't tried this myself but apparently it retains its pre-activated state.

Yup, it continues to work just fine. Have tested that.