Windows XP disc wanted

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marmel

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#22653 4-Jun-2008 09:41

Here's the situation, my parents have a NEC laptop which is about 3 years old running XP home. The OS was installed on a partition on the hard drive which became corrupted and could not be accessed. They are now in a situation where they have a genuine COA for XP home but no software disc to install it. I have called microsoft and they want $50 to send out a 50 cent disc. NEC can not help either.

Does anybody have an original windows xp home disc I could borrow? It would have to be the original without any of the sevice packs included or my parents 25 digit key will not work. (I have tried a recent xp home with sp3 disc and my parents key will not work with it.) I will not be using your key, I will be using my parents key printed on the bottom of the laptop.

The other option is if anyone has a genuine copy of xp home/xp media centre/xp pro they want to sell they would consider that.

I've had their laptop for about 4 days now trying to get it sorted and they are suffering from withdrawls....

Thanks.

tonyhughes

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#135396 4-Jun-2008 09:55

It should be mandatory to ship original media!

We bought several HP business laptops or varying models, and while the laptops themselves have been rock solid when rebuilt by us (i.e. we took brand new laptops with XP installed, then wiped XP and reloaded XP from scratch), I (and others) have found that very often, the recovery DVD creator will score a FAIL trying to make recovery discs.

No problem for IT people, but what a pain if you don't have the ability/resource to do this sort of thing, and if your Windows install goes south, you are left with nothing.

I just checked, and as far as XP Home goes, I only have SP2 sorry.

mentalinc

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#135397 4-Jun-2008 09:57

marmel:
Does anybody have an original windows xp home disc I could borrow? It would have to be the original without any of the sevice packs included or my parents 25 digit key will not work. (I have tried a recent xp home with sp3 disc and my parents key will not work with it.)

You will need to use an OEM cd. you are likly using a RETAIL or CORPORATE cd which will not accept the key.

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tchart

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#135427 4-Jun-2008 12:21

Yep, theres also not as much activation crap on the OEM version.

My HP did the same thing although I managed to clone the stuffed drive onto another bigger drive and restore from that (luckily the recovery partition wasnt that munted).

When ever I've restored my HP (with XP Home) I dont need to activate it at all and from memory it doesnt even ask for the 25 digit key.

Im surprised that MS said they would send you a disc. HP quoted me around $80 for a restore disc which is why I ended up cloning my drive.

Trevor

marmel

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#135431 4-Jun-2008 12:29

Microsoft must get a few requests for this service, at the end of the day my parents have already paid for a licenced version of xp, they just don't have the cd.

I am in the process of downloading a torrent of xp home oem so I will see how that goes.

marmel

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#135561 4-Jun-2008 21:59

The download worked great, they are up and running again.

GeekGuy

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#135564 4-Jun-2008 22:07

How did you go with the drivers for the laptop ? or were they covered by the XP installation ?
some drivers can be a buggar to find.

marmel

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#135568 4-Jun-2008 22:47

XP covered most of the vitals. The only thing I had to download from NEC were drivers for the wireless, graphics, modem, sound card.

mentalinc

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#135720 5-Jun-2008 16:06

Glad it worked.
Need to make sure you are installing the same "type" of windows ie OEM vs Retail vs Corportate

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marmel

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#135723 5-Jun-2008 16:17

mentalinc: Glad it worked.
Need to make sure you are installing the same "type" of windows ie OEM vs Retail vs Corportate

Yeah that was the key, thanks for your earlier post, that pointed me in the right direction. I thought it was dependant on which service pack was on the disc but as you said it depends on OEM/Retail etc.

The first program I downloaded was a retail version which didn't work. I then tried an OEM download which was the one that worked great.

Thanks for your help.