Newsgroup question and reply :)

[Jan]

A friend sent me this

Q Gave my son my machine and bought a different machine. I want to install Windows XP onto it.
Anyway of getting around the activation?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.


A *sigh*. I thought everyone knew about the magic cabbage. Never mind, here goes.

It appears that the engineers built in a keyboard escape sequence that can be used to bypass the activation requestor. As long as you're not a complete dope, you can probably do it.

You have to do this three times, rebooting the box each time as soon as the activation requestor appears:

Hold down CTRL and ALT Press the M-E-T-U-R-N-I-P keys in order Shutdown & Reboot

The third time the machine boots, you will be greeted with a list of vegetables. If you don't see the list of vegetables, then you've made a mistake. Power off the machine and try again.

Click on the talking _cabbage_ icon. You'll see lots of other talking vegetable icons BUT DON'T CLICK ON ANY OF THEM, especially the MUSHROOM!! (*sheesh*, I won't try _that_ one again!)

Click the cabbage and a popup shows with a picture of an animated cabbage. It says "Hi, I'm the magic cabbage! I can make lots of things out of cabbage. What would you like me to make today?" It actually talks to you in this silly voice and if you sit and watch, the vegetables in the background pick up musical instruments and start playing them! It's completely nuts! The piano playing mushrooms are good though.

Anyway. Click on "Make me some soup." Don't click anything else, especially the "Make me a mashed xxx" options.

The cabbage will say, "Okay, what kind of soup?" in a stupid squeaky voice.

Now here's the tricky bit. Click on the "Make me a soup out of the following ingredients" You must now select the vegetables in the correct order to make your soup (actually an activation key):

A bowl will appear into which you must drag a number of vegetables.
Ignore the cabbage whilst you do this (it dances around the screen urging you to pick tomatos and turnips. It says stupid stuff like "Wouldn't you like a leek with that?" Or "A potato would go well with those ingredients, wouldn't it?" Just IGNORE IT!!!")


Drag the following vegetables into the bowl:
2 tomatos
1 Parsely
5 green beans

Then click the magic cabbage. The screen will go black and then the magic cabbage will fade into view with a little chef's hat on and it will say "Would monsieur like anything to go with 'eez soup?" in a stoopid french accent and it will *wink* at you. Click "Oui" and select "Une Activation Key Pour Moi!"

The screen will go black *again*. And the magic cabbage will fade into view this time wearing a Zorro mask and it says. "Eh Amigo, if joo believe in thee majeek cabbage, then joo is loco. Thee majeek cabbage ees jus a meeth." in a stupid mexican accent. Don't worry about it, just click on the cabbage's mask and the activation instructions will be displayed.

Oh BTW let us know if you see the magic turnip. Someone says they found it one day and it offered to burn a CDROM for them.

[bigperm]

HAHA

Don't click on the mushroom. It is EVIL!