Microsoft has had to come clean and admit that the registration problem is actually an error in code intended to prevent registration.
This is the interesting bit: Office 2000 has code to prevent registration after April 15 2003. This is to ‘help’ you decide to upgrade/buy the next version.
The chukle here is that this code is bust and the registration box won’t go away, eventually culminating in ‘reduced functionality’. I can’t wait..
source: The Register