smeesh

I need some help from you copmuter gurus out there.

I reformated my girlfriends Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop with a fresh copy of XP. Everything was ducky until I tried to activate it online. After the "activation screen" pops up, the whole computer locks up. I tried reformating again to no avail.

I also tried other programs to see if I could narrow down what the problem was, and IE also locks up, though not all the time.

Anyone have any ideas? Even places to look for more info would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

portwineboy

Did the laptop originally come with WinXP or was it something older? I had to update the BIOS on my Sony Vaio to get XP to run on it.

or try this

# Q. Why can't I activate my Windows XP installation on my Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop?

A. This problem occurs because of a conflict between the XP activation component and the Inspiron 8100's graphics adapter. To work around the problem, you need to boot the installation in base-video mode, then activate XP. To boot your installation in base-video mode, perform the following steps:

1. Start the configuration utility--go to Start, Run and type

msconfig

2. Select the boot.ini tab.
3. Select your boot entry, then select the "/BASEVIDEO" check box.
4. Click Apply, then click OK.
5. Reboot your machine.

Alternatively, you can directly edit the boot.ini file and add the /basevideo switch to your boot entry. For example,

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
/fastdetect /basevideo

will boot XP in a base-video configuration.

After your computer reboots with the /basevideo option, you can activate your Windows installation. After activating the installation, you can remove the /basevideo option from the boot.ini file and reboot the system.

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