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Sometimes, out of the blue it may happen that a legitimate, original and already validate Windows XP copy fails the automatic Windows Genuine Advantage test, thus reporting  your Windows XP as a non-genuine one. The error is triggered  by the WGA ActiveX validator for some unknown issue. Most of the time this issue is due to some data corruption in the data.dat file which is not being properly read by your system. Here is a simple trick to fix it!

Manual steps to update the WGA Data.dat file on a single computer

This procedure will reset the data.dat file which is responsible for the issue.

1. Log on to the computer that is experiencing the problem by using an account that has administrator credentials.
2. Delete the Data.dat file from the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Windows Genuine Advantage\data folder.
3. Visit the following Microsoft Web site to confirm that the computer is reported as genuine:
   http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/downloads/validate.aspx (http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/downloads/validate.aspx)
4. Click Start, click Run, type wgatray.exe /b, and then click OK.Note The wgatray.exe command might not be available on your computer. This command is available only on computers that have Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications installed. If the wgatray.exe command is unavailable, it is not an error. Go to the next step. For more information about Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
   905474 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905474/ ) Description of the Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications application
5. Restart the computer.

Automated steps to update the WGA Data.dat file on a single computer

To perform an automated update of the Data.dat file, follow these steps:

1. Visit the following Microsoft Web site:
   http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012)
2. When you are prompted, click Run to run the Microsoft Genuine Advantage Diagnostic Tool.Note Depending on your security settings, you might be prompted several times to confirm that you want to run the tool.
3. Click Continue.
4. On the Windows tab, click Resolve.