It's probably WGA Validation not ActiveX (which is Internet Explorer's COM object handler).

I'm not being nasty, but I only ever give one form of advice to people with severe difficulties running Windows, and that's wipe it and install Linux.

I recommend you try out some Linux LiveCDs (runs without installing on the HDD) first, to see which you like best, and which works best with your hardware.

Look here first, they have a list of every Linux distro:
http://distrowatch.com/

My personal recommendations would be, in no particular order:

http://www.pclinuxos.com/
http://www.slax.org/
http://www.sabayonlinux.org/

http://www.elivecd.org/
http://www.debian.org/
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/

That last one, Fedora, is my personal favourite, but it's entirely up to you.

Make sure you back up all your documents etc., before wiping the HDD and installing Linux.

Good luck.