XP cannot log in or do restore

[zaf]

I am trying to help a friend who has XP home edition SP1 .

A few days ago, the system displayed a warning message box saying that the activation time period for XP had 2 days to go.
The system was already activated correctly 6 months ago so this message should not have occurred.

The system has now locked-up whereby when it is rebooted,
the two user accounts are displayed but when invoked, nothing happens - i.e. they are not logged in. C-Alt_del shows a box
stating that "windows product activation now expired - contact Microsoft " There is no other information such as telephone numbers to contact or codes to enter.

When a restore was tried, (XP CD in cd-rom), the CD was not accessed. I have checked the bois settings and the CD setting are bootable before the hard disk etc. It has always booted before.

What are my options :

1. Do I need to do a restore/recovery ?
2. Is there any easier was to resolve this problem?
3. Could I re-activate without doing a restore etc (remember there is no screen to input codes)

Any help appreciated

Thanks
Zaf

[snowmonkey]

you got two options if you want to recover the data:

1- Call Microsoft and ask for direction as what they could do (I don't think very much, but I could be wrong)

2- Visit this web site: http://nu2.nu/pebuilder/#screen and make your self a Windows PE boot CD (on another system that run Windows XP) the you can boot from the CD and recove the data and transfer it to another drive locally or a network drive (I know you have mentioned that you could not boot from the CD on your posting, I would think that you have a SCSI CD Rom, that's why, in which case you got to get an IDE drive)

Option number 3 , format and reinstall

cheers