I recently formatted my hard drive and reinstalled xp. Everything is fine except when I attempt to activate Windows I get a long delay while it is "checking for connectivity" then it says it can't activate Windows - message number 32781. Tried activating over the phone but that doesn't work either.

Do you have a working Internet connect? Why can't you activate over the phone? What's the problem? Stuart

Thanks for the reply but I just managed to get around it. My mistake was not activating Windows straightaway during or after installation. Instead I waited and downloaded/installed drivers for graphics card etc. I think this changed the activation code so it didn't match the original. I have reinstalled Windows and this time activated during setup with no problems. Cheers anyway.

Instead I waited and downloaded/installed drivers for graphics card etc. I think this changed the activation code so it didn't match the original. I didn't. You can activate up to thirty days after installation. The activation code is determined by the hardware, not the software. Stuart

Yes - the activation code is determined by the hardware. So when I installed the graphics card this changed the hardware (from onboard graphics to nvidia card), thereby changing the code. Activating Windows before I installed the graphics card (as I did the second time round) - rather than after - means the activation code is valid.