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XP key not working on 1 partition... wtf?

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DarkDraco

Member
Joined
Aug 2, 2003
been a few years since ive logged in here but ive ran into a problem thats boggling my mind.

ok so someone had a dead dell that wanted the harddrive transplanted into a new barebone without reinstalling windows. the desktop had 2 drives setup to dual boot.
so i move over the drives and usually a repair install will make the drives boot properly... not in this case. i ran into a mess...

the backup partition boots xp fine, i cant get the main partition to do anything.
i extracted the original key that was installed to reuse. i booted from the disk and did a repair install and got to where it asks for the key and doesnt work. i rebooted in safe mode and ran the setup.exe and still didnt accept the key.
at this point i use one of my disks and keys and neither work... at this point i have no idea whats going on...
i boot into the back partition, insert my cd, go to upgrade, enter key and it continues. i made a text file on the C drive with the key i just entered that worked and saved it. i rebooted into safe mode on the other partition and repeated the steps and the key was invalid again. its not accepting any keys inside or outside of windows... wtf is going on
 
If that is the key that came with the stock Dell install, it won't activate normally. Microsoft gives them pre-activated copies that can only be installed by imaging the system (the disks they came with).

Since this is not a Dell, the license is not for it and you shouldn't be using it there anyway. We can't really assist with this since it would be breaking the rules and the EULA for Dell/Microsoft.
 
Fwiw, there's programs like Paragon's Adaptive Recovery that allows you to reset all the nuts and bolts (hal, etc) in a situation like this. It will trigger reactivation and, as thid said, you should not use the Dell key (likely won't work anyway since the hardware ids won't match a dell machine).

As for getting a repair install to work, you need to use the exact version of windows already installed in order to get a repair started and key accepted. I mean, sometimes it's VERY exact (like very specific version/disc numbers). That's why I always use a third party utility to prepare the old operating system for use on new hardware, then reactivate with a new key.
 
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