When you established your account, one piece of information you provided was an email address. The forum software sent you an email with instructions on how to to activate your account. Until you open that email and follow the instructions in it, your account will be disabled.

You can check to see if your account is in this state by following this procedure:
1. Make sure that you have logged on with your user name and password.
2. Go to our home page, www.unix.com, and scroll down to the bottom of the page.
3. Near the bottom of the page is a list of users who are on. Click your user name.
4. You are now viewing your profile. Does it say: "Users Awaiting Email Confirmation"? If so, you have not activated your account.

You can also get yourself into this state if you are an established user by changing your email address.

If you gave an invalid email address you will not have a way to fix your account. All you can do, at present, is create another account.

If your email address is valid, you can request another copy of the activation email: resend activation information
If you have the activation code, you can enter it manually together with your user name on: The Activation Form