Hopelessly stuck.

Post #294,967 by ChrisR 10/22/07 10:51:29 AM Reply	Hopelessly stuck. Got a bootable CD working. And the hard disk appears to be fine. Also downloaded some expireware from MS that I gather is intended for such things ([link\|http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5D600369-0554-4595-8AB4-C34B2860E087&displaylang=en\|Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset]. All diagnostics on the disk and OS show no problems. I was thinking that it might be that the MBR was hosed. Ran MbrFix but that didn't help. Then went ahead and ran BootItNG, which also runs fine. Next course of action is to find a copy of XP and reinstall the OS. Now if we can just locate the original upgrade CD's. Anyhow, thanks for the pointers.
Post #294,968 by Andrew Grygus 10/22/07 11:15:35 AM Reply	You don't need the original CDs . . . . . unless it's a big name brand (Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. - see below) What you need is any XP CD of the same type (Home / Pro), preferably SP2 and the license number from the current install (is it on a sticker on the machine?). First try a repair install. Take "Install" not "R"=Repair at the first offer, then after the system finds the current install take "R" there. Unlike W98 you still need the proper license number. If that fails, do a full reinstall. If it is a big name brand than you need a CD from a more or less similar machine of the same brand. You don't need the license number because the number on the machine and the number registered in Windows are both phony - neither one will activate. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #294,969 by ChrisR 10/22/07 11:29:20 AM Reply	It's an older machine (Sony) That got upgraded to WinXP at some point. My son can't find the CD's that they used to upgrade it with. Seems like I've used a utility to retrieve the License number from the registry before. Will have to track it down. Though I don't know if it will work when the MS Diag tool is attached to the OS.
Post #294,970 by Andrew Grygus 10/22/07 11:54:44 AM 10/22/07 11:59:25 AM Reply	So you don't have the license number for the upgrade? The sticker didn't get put on the machine? If you can't boot the machine you've got a problem. Keyfinder by Magic Jellybean will recover the license numbers from a running system but I've never tried recovering it from an unbootable system. Hmmmm . . just looked and the current version of keyfinder - it has a "Load Hive" feature that may be able to get the information from another disk mounted to a bootable system. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx] Edited by Andrew Grygus Oct. 22, 2007, 11:59:25 AM EDT Expand All History

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