Hi, I couldn't find this anywhere so if I simply overlooked it I apologize. I run a pc repair bizness but have limited work with windows xp home. I replaced a fried proc/sysboard on a compaq computer. I thought I may have to reinstall xp, but it came up to the welcome screen. It is telling me I need to activate windows (part of the anti-piracy stuff), but it can only be done on the administrator acct. I hit ctrl-alt-del twice to get the normal windows logon, and try to logon to admin w/o a pw, hoping they didn't set 1. It comes up w/ the message: Unable to log you on because of an account restriction. Has nothing about a bad password or anything. Is there some sort of way to get in to activate it. The people whose computer I'm fixing aren't home so I can check if there's a password on it, and I don't have their Quick Restore cd's to just reinstall the OS. I can click on the other accounts and it tries to load then tells me to activate windows. Any help is appreciated, and if there's nothing I can do except either get the password from them or reinstall it all that's fine, tough luck for them I guess. Ty.

Sometimes it just locks you out, which is useful. You need to get the free-phone manual activatation number from Microsoft.com, phone them up, explain your prob and they'll re-activate for you.