As opposed to an average non-programming windows user I tend to reinstall windows at least once or twice a year. Especially with all the crap I download, you can never be sure if some of the stuff truly uninstalls itself completely. But anyway I was reinstalling XP Pro an hour ago and for the first time it actually did something different.

Oddly enough though I tried to click the "Microsoft Activation Assistance Web Site" link but my internet was too slow and caused a timeout that crashed the Microsoft server, causing it to return an asp.net application error page telling me the request timed out. Not very graceful error handling by the microsoft web devs.

So instead of trying again to activate windows I simply clicked cancel and proceeded to install SP2 as well as download additional windows updates. And when I went to activate it again just a moment ago, poof, no more nag screen. Something about SP2 or one of the other windows updates must have nullified the windows activation mechanism, because windows is now activated and ready to go.

This post is for those of you who in the off chance read this post and reinstall windows and it tells you have exceeded your install/activation limit, to simply try and install SP2 and all windows updates before trying to activate. The activations exceeded nag screen just might disappear like mine did!