Windows XP / Dell OEM activation bypass (VM conversion)

[Meresgi]

So having an issue on a Dell machine. We took a Windows XP box and put it through VMware converter to get a vmdk and booted it up. Obviously since it was a Dell OEM install of windows xp (we believe) when we converted, it came up requiring activation as the hardware changed on the system.

The guy who had the original install media left 5 yrs ago and apparently no one thought to get the discs from him...or even ask about them. Also Microsoft is less then helpful as "Jim Jones" from India or Pakistan just demands we give him a product key that works.

I was able to get a script that decrypts the XOR'd key from the registry, but when we put that into the machine the activation window shows NOTHING as the ID so we can't activate over the phone, and online activation is not an option because of the sensitivity of the machine.

Anyone know of a viable way to bypass activation? I know how to mod the WPAEvents OOBE registry but that just gets rid of the pesky notice, after 30 days you get hit with a "You cant login w/o activating mother fucker" window and resetting the timer every 30 days is not an optimal solution. I know there are a lot of compiled tools out there, but obviously when ran through any virus scan they come up with a host of alerts (any tool doing the shit I want would obviously post alerts, however I dont have the background / source code to figure out what is legit and what isn't).

[orinthia]

The methods I used to activate xp involved either injecting a corrected oem certificate and faking the oem branding (bios mod) or using some other injection. I believe I used the oem method to permanently activate the XP VMs that microsoft hosts. The problem though, as you've mentioned, it takes a bit of faith and companies don't have any. Though, xp is unsupported, so not sure why they would care in the end.

I'll look for it and edit this post once I find it. I remember it involved editing some files to make the VM appear that it had an OEM bios, and then injecting the matching OEM certificate. You might find it before I can dig through my crap with that bit of info.


edit: there's a couple methods since I did this years ago:
1. the oem bios method which involves editing a specific xml file to include some pcbios stuff (you add 4 lines) and then run an oembios changer inside the VM with the appropriate bios files. I did this for mine, worked well.
2. getting actual external files and have virtualbox use them to emulate the bios, and then oembio changer, yadda yadda.
3. hacktivation. I never liked this since it'd randomly stop working due to updates, but since you're not gonna be updating it anymore, this might not be too bad. Problem is finding original files. I think the oembios changer had one of these in the folder as a last resort.

edit2: fuck, just noticed you said VMware, there's some things for it but I've not used them. Can link the forums I'm using to find these things: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/for...Virtualization. This is the main place these sorts of things are posted and worked on. There's a lot of other crap there too.

edit3: windows xp stuff, can find the bios changers in here: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/for...rating-Systems