I started the regular WinXP installation. If it finds an existing WinXP, it offers to 'repair' it, which I chose. This is almost a reinstall, but your installed hardware and drivers mostly stay intact.
As I have a pretty old WinXP CD with only SP1, I decided first to install SP2 (from CD) before going online. Did so, and when I was done, the boot screen told my that I was probably using a pirated Windows version. WTF? I was asked whether I wanted to verify it. I chose yes. Verification failed ofc (no internet yet), and I was forcibly logged out. When I tried to login again, I was logged out right away again.
Fortunately I managed to login after rebooting, installed an internet connection and started the verifier, which told me everything was ok. As some automatic update was running in the background, I got logged out by the updater - which somehow prevented the verification result to be stored.
I had to go through the verification procedure three times until it worked.
This is pretty retarded, if you ask me. I wonder who has come up with this crap.
(I still prefer WinXP over Linux
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)