the big crash

[Splitpin]

Gidday team.....questions. A friend of mine (a simmer) recently, somehow really messed up his computer....not sure how. anyway, Ive been to see him this morning....manasged to get it to boot up from his "product recovery CD" from the now departed "the pc company" Ive got it to a point that windows (xp home sp1) is loading.....and has now stopped and wants the product key.

He hasnt got one...Ive got the recovery cd back at my place,but i cant find a key on it...so Im assuming there ain't one

I called microsoft...they where of no use at all, and refered me to some website...which wont work.

Is there a way to access the key on his pc....even though windows is only half installed.?........Poor guy just wants to fly...and i really want to get it sorted.

I have a genuine xp (upgrade )disc.....could i run that on his system and overwrite whats there .......and if so , would it validate later on.

Seems to be catch 22.....you get a recovery disc with no key....but the disc asks for a key..........

Any help will be greatfully accepted

Cheers

[Splitpin]

Dont worry guys....I'll head back over there and bring it back here and have a play.......I'll leave him flying dvd's to ease the stress.

Cheers

Marty

[ZK-MAT]

There could be a sticker on the case that has the key printed on it, or on literature that came with it. If all else fails, slave the HDD to your PC and run magical jelly bean key finder to extract the key (Google it).

Good luck!!

[ZK-MAT]

Cool

Take a look at my reply on the other thread.

Cheers

Matt

[Splitpin]

QUOTE (Splitpin @ Aug 22 2010, 02:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Dont worry guys....I'll head back over there and bring it back here and have a play.......I'll leave him flying dvd's to ease the stress.

Cheers

Marty

Dont worry again i found it on the recovery disc.......if your interested its like this.

How-To: Find Windows XP Product Key from the Windows XP CD:

1) Insert Windows XP cd into a working computer.
2) Exit the Autorun introduction.
3) Open “My Computerâ€￾
4) Right Click on the Windows XP cd-rom drive and select explore.
5) Open the USWXP32P_ZX folder. (It may be as a hidden folder. If you cannot locate the folder, you may also search for unattend.txt and mark “Search Hidden Filesâ€￾.)
6) Open the sysprep folder.
7) Open unattend.txt

Your CD’s product key is contained within the unattend.txt file.

QUOTE (ZK-MAT @ Aug 22 2010, 02:27 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Cool

Take a look at my reply on the other thread.

Cheers

Matt

Cheers MAT i missed your post....and went back for a second look and found it.....thanks a lot

[ZK-MAT]

Well done that man!

[Splitpin]

QUOTE (ZK-MAT @ Aug 22 2010, 02:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There could be a sticker on the case that has the key printed on it, or on literature that came with it. If all else fails, slave the HDD to your PC and run magical jelly bean key finder to extract the key (Google it).

Good luck!!

Thanks MAT......got is sorted. He didn't have any numbers on anything, and i wasnt sure if a non windows recovery disc would have the key....but turns out it did.
Thanks for your time

[deeknow]

QUOTE (ZK-MAT @ Aug 22 2010, 02:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well done that man!

Hey Mat, you might wanna remove your vatsimindicators.net image from your footer, I think the service is down, not sure how permanantly. I've noticed that any time I'm in a forum site where someone has one the page load gets held up in Firefox while it tries to fetch the image. Its a shame as its a neat idea.

[ZK-MAT]

QUOTE (deeknow @ Aug 22 2010, 02:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey Mat, you might wanna remove your vatsimindicators.net image from your footer, I think the service is down, not sure how permanantly. I've noticed that any time I'm in a forum site where someone has one the page load gets held up in Firefox while it tries to fetch the image. Its a shame as its a neat idea.

Hiya Dean

Many thanks for pointing that out mate, most appreciated! I had forgotten about the signoff image, and so never noticed that it wasn't working, but was wondering why the pages always seemed to be loading lol.

Awesome, all good now.

Matt