Win xp license key

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pagan

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#20817 6-Apr-2008 18:41

Hi a friend of mine is getting an error or at startup from the bios saying his hard drive is about to fail.

He has a compact Presario with a hard drive partition for the back up so no back up cd’s. I said I would replace the hard drive for him but I’m unsure if the license will work.

My question is

Can I use his legitimate win xp key home edition that’s on the side of his case with my win xp home cd (he does not have one) to install a new copy of xp.

Cheers

ajobbins

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#121585 6-Apr-2008 18:48

Depends, some licence keys will only work with the manufacturer supplied disks.

freitasm

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#121589 6-Apr-2008 18:56

You should be able to get a restore CD from HP/Compaq.

zocster

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#121590 6-Apr-2008 18:57

freitasm: You should be able to get a restore CD from HP/Compaq.

Last time I tried this it cost money.

freitasm

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#121591 6-Apr-2008 18:57

No one said it would be free...

ajobbins

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#121592 6-Apr-2008 18:58

zocster:
freitasm: You should be able to get a restore CD from HP/Compaq.

Last time I tried this it cost money.

I doubt they will want to pay for the cost of producing media when it's not their responsibility to keep it safe

pagan

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#121593 6-Apr-2008 19:02

What if i leave that old harddrive in and try to restore onto the new hard drive,
can that be done?

freitasm

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#121594 6-Apr-2008 19:02

adamj: I doubt they will want to pay for the cost of producing media when it's not their responsibility to keep it safe

I don't this is the case. They put the recover partition on the HDD, but what happens if the drive dies?

IIRC however, Compaq laptops and desktops comes with an utility to create a boot DVD from the image on this partition. Look for it in the Start Menu.

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ajobbins

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#121595 6-Apr-2008 19:03

freitasm: IIRC however, Compaq laptops and desktops comes with an utility to create a boot DVD from the image on this partition. Look for it in the Start Menu.

GF's VAIO was the same. They gave us a DVD-R at Sony Style when we bought it and explained how to do it to her.

pagan

18 posts

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#121598 6-Apr-2008 19:08

I will have a look tomorrow for a boot/recover dvd creatore
Thanks for the help
chris

Rugbyfan69

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#122244 9-Apr-2008 07:44

You should be able to make a recovery disk from booting from that partion

pagan

18 posts

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#122380 9-Apr-2008 18:55

Hi
I made the cd's from the winxp recovery put in the new H/D and installed
All is good, it even put in a recovery partition

Thanks for the help
Chris

tonyhughes

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#122386 9-Apr-2008 19:16

Thanks for reporting back! Its great to see good outcomes, and happy users.