activation woes after migration

My old laptop died but I was able to migrate my files to my new one. Everything was OK until a few days ago when I started getting "You have three days to activate windows since your hardware has changed". Then a box would appear saying "Do you want to activate Windows XP now" I would click yes then a new box titled "Windows Activation" would appear except that it was utterly blank. I would dismiss it and Windows would come back. Now it won't let me log in- the same box asking if I want to activate appears, I click yes and then it logs in for one second and then logs me right back out and then the "do you want to activate" box reappears and seems all set to send me on an endless loop. WTF?? How the hell am I supposed to activate it if it won't let me activate it?

Windows XP
Parallels 4
MBP (latest model)
OS 10.6.6

blevins321 said:

Do you already have SP3 installed?

Click to expand...

I'm not exactly sure. I've been running XP for 2 years and never was prompted for a service pack- if that means anything. Thanks for replying!