I received a telephone call yesterday morning from a businessman new to the area (not sure how he got my number, but I can't complain). he's setting up an Internet cafe & has most of the work done. He has 6 rigs ready to work & intends to have a total of 10.

Unfortunately, from what I can see, he's bought them as 2nd user systems & the problem is that they ALL have genuine product keys on the rigs but the keys installed are different & WPA is stating counterfeit. The guy is genuine & wants everything legit.

Going through my reference books, I cannot find how to reactivate without having to reinstall the o/s. However, I did come across a section on activation. If I delete wpa.dbl & wpa.bak, am I correct in assuming that Windows will ask for re-activation?

Have already been given the maintainance contract as well as permission to install boinc & want to keep this guy sweet as he intends to open another cafe on the other side of town (I want that contract ).

Should have tested that option before I posted, sorry guys.

Backed up both files then deleted & rebooted. Couldn't log on & Windows requested reactivation. No problems experienced. Nice, will have some fun this afternoon installing boinc & getting my little farm back up to where it was

10 rigs here and there, you don't even have to plug back all your own rigs to get back to the powercruncher association! (well, you didn't really left it anyway!)

I don't know what the engineer said on his return to his office, but I received a revised bill this morning. They reduced the amount by £250.00 accompanied by a letter stating that they will monitor my usage for the next month to compare with the old readings.

The company is aware that I am a heavy power user & over the past few years, my quarterly bill is on average, £240.00. The engineer did tell me that with the extra rigs, I should have only increased my costs by approx £20 per month, & he was amazed that it totalled over £500!

As my meter & cables are internal, he checked the outside cables for any tampering & could not find any.

Experiencing a problem with the cafe, the keys on the rigs are also coming up as invalid, but the guy doesn't seem to mind, even after telling him that he could be fined heavily if caught (Microsoft was in this area throughout March & caught several shops & business'es with counterfeit software). At least I got paid for my time.

For WinXP the keys changed for different releases (SP1 keys will not work on SP2, etc...). As well, OEM keys won't work on retail releases - kind of a pain. When in doubt, try a different installation disc...

That's some great news for now! I wish everything get fixed by next month!

Thanks. I always keep copies of both retail & OEM (both SP1 & 2). In his case, all the keys on the rigs are OEM & from the age of the rigs, would say that they are SP1. He won't let me turn them legit but still expects me to service them. I've refused as I've got a good rep in the area & quite like the benefits of being legit & a Microsoft Registered Partner.

@ Red Panda, yes that was a nice result. Look forward to next month to see what they will say/do. for a large company, with the state of Customer Service these days, I was really amazed at the turnaround.

Going to get some of those Kill-a-Watt devices so that I can keep a check on usage.