Ok, first of all, is it normal that someone has reformatted par!@#$%^&*ion, reinstalled XP Home, and they don't get the 30 days for activation period? Is it possible they did not reformat correctly? edit: just talked with my dad, he says he did a NTFS full reformat... I don't see how that wouldn't have worked... And they get an error when connecting to microsoft server (something like "Could not activate Windows online...", after "Checking connectivity...") ... The license is legal. I am guessing it is because their network driver isn't installed correctly (or not installed at all) , so how would they install such a driver, without using windows? I don't know which card they have, are there some generic drivers that would work? Or maybe just plugging the computer directly on the modem, without going through router, would help? edit: After windows is started on the problem computer, the other computer connected to the router can see it on the network... so the connection should be correct, right? I need help as quick as possible thanks That's my parent's computer, and I'm not there now, so I can only help them remotely, which makes the task more difficult