The wpa_kill utility does an excellent job of patching msoobe so you are no
longer bothered by activation.

Links on Windows Product Activation:

http://www.licenturion.com/xp/
http://www.licenturion.com/xp/fully-licensed-wpa.txt

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Windows Product Activation (WPA) Backup / Restore Summary

	backup:
		%systemroot%\windows\system32\wpa.dbl
		%systemroot%\windows\system32\wpa.bak
	note:
		Parition / Volume Serial Number (dir c:)

	restore:

		http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/VolumeId.html

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Windows Product Activation (WPA) Backup / Restore
How to Reinstall Windows XP Without Having to Reactivate With Microsoft

To save your activation when reloading Windows XP, backup the following
files in your system32 directory to external media before formatting your
hard drive and re-installing Windows XP:

	%systemroot%\windows\system32\wpa.dbl
	%systemroot%\windows\system32\wpa.bak

After successfully reinstalling Windows XP, reboot your computer into
SafeMode (you can either press F8 as Windows is booting up to see the
Windows Advanced Options menu and select SAFEBOOT_OPTION=Minimal.

Rename wpa.dbl and wpa.bak to preserve them and then copy your original
files from the external media into your system32 directory. Make sure if
you are going to be using a USB drive to copy the files to your C: drive
before booting into SafeMode (just in case the USB device is not loaded).

This trick is only for reinstalling Windows XP on the exact same computer
after formatting the hard drive. Product activation monitors the system
configuration. If it detects a major hardware change or even too many
minor hardware changes within a set number of days (180 days before it
resets?) then it crosses the threshold and requires reactivation.

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The WPA system checks ten categories of hardware:

	Display Adapter 
	SCSI Adapter 
	IDE Adapter (effectively the motherboard) 
	Network Adapter (NIC) and its MAC Address 
	RAM Amount Range (i.e., 0-64mb, 64-128mb, etc.) 
	Processor Type 
	Processor Serial Number 
	Hard Drive Device 
	Hard Drive Volume Serial Number (VSN) 
	CD-ROM / CD-RW / DVD-ROM 

There is a useful program XPInfo which will give you a simple picture of
which categories are currently casting Yes votes at the boot-up check.
http://www.licenturion.com/xp/xpinfo-exe.zip

Two things are recorded for disks: the number of the disk drive itself,
and the Volume Serial Number (VSN) of the partition on it. The VSN is part
of the data in the partition’s first sector, so it is changed when you
reformat the drive. It is worth getting the freeware utility Volume ID to
restore the original VSN. Before you reformat, run VOL from a Command
Prompt, note the VSN (e.g., 1F2E-3C4B) in the second line. Then, after the
reformat and new Windows XP installation, defer the new activation until
you have run Volume ID to restore the old VSN, and rebooted. This is not
essential — but it saves one of the ‘Yes votes’ against any future hardware
change. (If you don’t wish to run this utility, the next best way to obtain
the same result would be to delete the old Win XP files from the hard drive
before reinstalling, rather than actually reformatting.)

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Altering the computer's volume ID first, which is easily enough done. They
can also use forged network cards MAC addresses, so now they've taken two
parts of the hardware ID out of the picture. Next, use the hardware profile
to tell the computer it's a notebook with a docking station. This works,
and tells WPA to stop counting the IDE/SCSI controller and the graphics card.

The WPA files in the system32 directory are deleted if significant hardware
changes are detected.