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I'm having serious computer woes.
After having problems playing MystOnline someone suggested (among other things) making sure I had the latest Service Pack installed.  So I checked and I didn't, even though I usually update quite regularly.  So I went about installing SP" (Vista), and all seemed well, until I upon the next restart of my comupter, apparently the process hadn't finished... it was on stage 3 out of 3 at 69%, and stayed there for a very long time.

Perhaps this was normal, so after well over 2 hours of waiting for any change I decided to go to bed and leave it running.  Sure enough, when I awoke at about 5am this it seemed to have finished.  It was on the Vista welcome screen, asking me for my password.  It accepted my password, and then the screen went black, and a window came up asking  me to 'Activate Windows now' or 'Activate later'.. I clicked 'now'... and an error message came up telling me to reinstall Windows... something I'd rather not do if I can avoid it.

Then it crashed anyway, when I brought up the 'How do I reinstall Windows' help link.

So I restarted my computer, and guess what?  it went straight back to the installation screen saying it was on stage 3 out of 3, but this time it got stuck at 65%... I decided to leave it running, go back to bed and deal with it in the morning.

Morning came, sure enough, there it was again asking for my passwords, which it accepted, and sure enough the black screen came up asking me to 'Activate' Windows...  this time I clicked 'Later', which is why I'm able to use my computer...

The thing is, everything is working, an my computer even now has SP2 installed on it according to the System Information.  But the worrying thing is a) I clearly can't wait 2 or more hours every time I want to use my computer, and b) my wallpaper has disappeared, leaving a black background, with a little message in the corner saying "this copy of Windows is not genuine"... Well I assure you it IS genuine.  It's the very Windows that came bunged with my computer in the first place.

What do I do?
(Clearly the first thing you are thining is 'Reinstall Windows' but I'm woried about the consequences...  Will I lose everything?  I mean I have a lot of stuff backed up, and the means to back up anything that's not, but I'd really rather avoid the faffing about if there is a simpler solution I'm not aware of.)

Cheers.

I'd use the repair option with a vista install disc (if supplied) or get hold of windows 7 and perform a upgrade both should replace the system files, system restore is a option too if you have it enabled.