xp 30 day activation

[TEAK36]

I recently purchased a second hand pc from my brother which ran on XP Home.It is only 2 years old,but he had so much rubbish on it,that I decided to format the hard and start again.My brother has lost the discs that came with the pc,but I have a copied disc with XP Pro on it that I decided to load.After I installed the new OS,a box came up stating I had 30 days to activate windows.I stupidly ignored this message and after 30 days I could not get into the pc unless I activated the OS.I loaded the XPpro disc again,but the same thing happened.I know the problem is not with the disc because I have used on 2 other pc's without having this problem.Does anyone know if there is a way around this?If it is of any help,the pc is a Hewlett Packard.

[Gandy]

If you have used the same disc on two other PC's then it's no wonder it won't activate.  Activation is designed to prevent piracy which is essentially what you're committing.  XP should only work on the first PC it was activated on.  The only way round is to buy a new copy of XP.

[stevie21]

Or to use the same disc with a different serial number (which would still be akin to piracy!).