XP change product key?

I had a friend do an install of XP didn檛 activate it and now when I went to change product key by the below instructions I get invalid key. But it is a valid key. How can I correct this with out a reinstall because of the SATA drivers has to be installed first and I don檛 have those and He would rather not have me reinstall.

%26gt; To change an existing key, run regedit and edit oobetimer in this key

%26gt; HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Wi?br>
NT\CurrentVersion\WPAEvents

%26gt; Click on the OOBE timer and delete the value in there then



%26gt; Then run this program from start run

%26gt;

%26gt; %systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a

%26gt;

%26gt; Select Telephone update, then select update key at the next window.

Enter

%26gt; the key, and then close it; Reboot, then run this program again, to

make

%26gt; sure the update took.

%26gt;

%26gt; %systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /aXP change product key?
call microsoft's activation line. it's a simple fix. they'll give it to you