I have suddenly got this Office Activation issue today despite having a legally licensed full version of Office XP. I got the error message but my application was already Activated and therefore I could not re-activate and rid myself of the error message. I read several of the posts and managed to find the answer to my problem which was to delete the data.dat file and then re-activate the application. All is OK now.
Well all this is alright for us geeky sorts - but what about all the perfectly legal, law-abiding citizens who are now going to get these scary error messages despite paying for fully licensed applications? Whilst I think that we need to get around the piracy issue, affecting loads of innocent users around the World isn't going to win the argument. How many calls will us geeky people receive this week from non it-literate friends looking worrying about this and looking for a solution?