HI,
Hope someone can help me. Over XMAS, I had the mother board fail on a machine I rely on for development work. It has a huge number of software apps and many folders outside the "Documents and settings" and would be a nightmare to reconstruct. The 2 250GB hard drives were in perfect order. The machine was running XP Professional. I had a broken arm to make life easier!!
I looked up the microsoft web sites and
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/824125 they explained that the correct process for a failed motherboard was to make a repair installation (getting the HAL etc. correct).
On the basis of this I bought from MISCO a new HP Compaq dx2450 (complete with working motherboard, licensed for Vista Business, with XP installed) and the HP install disks for XP and Vista. I also bought 2 ide external usb boxes for the old hard drives. My intention was to use this new XP licence for the repaired system working in the new box. The HP COA on the box has a vista key on it and indicates that it is downgraded to XP.
Then fun and games!! during the process I discovered that XP media will not restore to USB external drives even thought MOB will boot from them. That XP-Sp2 repair will not work if you have not previously un-installed IE7 using the recovery console and then needs to be un-installed afterwards again using safe mode. Thank goodness I had not installed SP3 on my old system, or I would have had to slipstreamed the HP disks with SP3 for the repair to work at all.
In any case I built the machine in HP default many times in the process and took a full backup from it for safety. I was discovered to find that the HP restore+ full repair from the DVD removes the repair partition instead of repairing it. So after a while I only had a single partition.
So finally, I cleanly copied the the partition containing my old copy of XP etc. from my usb/ide external drive to C as the only partition, marked it as active, and immediately brought up the recovery console from HP - XP-sp2 installation disks, deleted IE7,... and having
rebooted, then did an install/repair from the same disks. This is recommended above.
This produced two errors - first it needed some drivers from the
avg virus scanner, which, by installing my virus scanner on one of your test virtual XP machines, I was able to obtain, it succeeded except for an error in the installation of COM+. The machine has no network connections yet. Otherwise all seems to have gone quite well. Even outlook installed
seemlessly on the second attempt when I made sure one of the hard drives had the full
ooffice 2007
MSOCache.
This took days!! But in the end went
seemlessly. However, and even though I use the appropriate HP install disks and Restore+ disk on the correct HP hardware, following a repair, as opposed to a clean install, it is forcing me to an immediate activation. I phoned the number, but got nowhere, the only key I have is the one on the install CD, and on the running new HP build, that is to say, the special
VLK that HP uses with
SLP. Of course, I was asked to change this, since its purpose is to avoid activation - and it is not valid for activation. I was
aked to change this for the one on the COA - but this one which presumably it the vista one, was rejected and your automated service hang up saying go back to your OEM.
Now, what do I do, I should not need to do anything! I am on the correct hardware with the correct disks. Looking into my repair with safe mode suggests that it has been very successful. But it is
completly inaccessible and very urgently required. The issue seems to be purely in the activation.
I still have the working HP backed up - can I copy certain keys and files from it to reconnect my repaired system to whatever code checks the bios is valid etc. I could also copy this over into the repaired system, and then import the
registrys that refer to
soiftware, users, etc. But this seems outrageous and very difficult. The recommended way is the way I have done it - but it seems that the XP-install disks do not validate the bios and properly overwrite the existing authentication.
Please help - I am 100% legal - trying to cope with a MOB failure, I have followed MS recommendations, checked with HP before I purchased, that I could use the media they supplied to repair an existing installation onto my new machine...
I seem to have had to go through many hoops that are really only there for copy protection, and at this point I seem to have a properly repaired system, - bar the fact that it is asking to activate and logging me off immediately.
Thanks
Terry
PS As a fix, if I did yet another repair, with standard XP professional volume media and used the same HP XP key; and copied over the
wpa.
dbl and
oembios.* from the working HP-installation, would it then all work, check the bios was correct, allow me to log in, and leave me with the correct oem licensed software.
