Activating can be a pest in Windows XP. Lets just say for example, that you havn't activated your copy of Windows XP for one reason or another, but you need to get important files of your hard drive. Well, there is a simple way around this. As your computer is booting press F8 after the first screen so that a menu comes up. One of the options will be Safe Mode. Choose that and then your computer will begin booting. If it asks for you to log on, then log on and your Desktop will load without you being prompted to activate your copy of Windows XP. Bear in mind that this is NOT a way to use XP without activating, it is only temporary and only usefull in situations like I mentioned above, also many things will be disabled because "Safe Mode" is used to sort out computer issues. But otherwise, hope this helps!

Tried this and it didn't work oh well!

I think you mgiht be doing this wrong or there may be some other issue, or this could have been pacted in an update, ohwell, Merry Christmas!