asked on

Undo a Win XP installation

My situation is a client that had a Compaq system with WinXP Home installed. The motherboard went bad & I transplanted their harddrive, etc. into a new box (same processor/differnet motherboard). Hoping that starting up from any XP Home CD would redo the drivers, I borrowed a friend's 'upgrade' CD.

But XP installed the Upgrade & required that serial number. Since I can't use it, & it won't accept the original serial number, is there a way to 'undo' this installation? The client is going to buy a new copy of XP.

Thanks.

Ted Swenson
tcswenson@earthlink.net

shivsa

U can do the clean install.

http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/expertzone/columns/honeycutt/02october07.asp
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

shivsa

if above does not work then check this out to wipe out completely.
check out this article on wiping out hard drives and some free tools
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110012,pg,2,00.asp

Fatal_Exception

You might try Last Known Good, but I do not think that would help since you already overwrote the original installation. You should have just booted up with the new MB and let XP find the new hardware. Then installed the MB drivers, and reactivated the OS with MS.

FE

SOLUTION

Fatal_Exception

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tcswenson

ASKER

Thanks, all. My responses:
1. A clean install would be preferable, but I'm trying to preserve data if possible.
2. The Compaq Recovery CD wouldn't work without Compaq hardware.
3. Simple rebooting produced a Blue Screen, most likely associated with new IDE controllers.

I tried the original Product Key, but it wouldn't work with the version I was trying.

shivsa

U can recover the data from CrazyOne recover tool list and then u can do the clean Install.
http://oldlook.experts-exchange.com/questions/20441684/recover-deleted-items-in-XP.html

Fatal_Exception

Yea, forgot about the restrictions OEM puts on their installations. ARGH!!! Good reason to build your own, eh?

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Rcorn8559

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slink9

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Fatal_Exception

One thing to remember here though, you will/may have to take ownership of the files on the old drive (if NTFS). Admin privelges a must. And if any of the data was encrypted, well forget about retrieving it.

FE

slink9

Notice that it is XP Home. Encrypted is impossible (I believe I remember that, at least).

Rcorn8559

I would not buy a new copy of xp until I had to use the one that came with computer the product key should be on side of case then contact microsoft when prompted. I had to do this but it was with a copy that I bought and when motherboard went bad all I did was reload wp home on new system and when it told me my activation was no good it gave me a phone number to call I did this and explained to tech they gave me a new number and it is working

Fatal_Exception

When you activate XP, it creates a hash combined of your Key and HAL, then sends it to MS. When you change out your MB, a new HAL is created and the Activation is enabled.

Just FYI

Oh... and you are right. Home does not have the encryption attribute. :)

FE

slink9

If I were at home at the moment I could have verified that one. I had XP Home on my system until I won XP Pro at a MS seminar. I put that on my machine and installed XP Home on my kids' system. I don't use encryption, though.

tcswenson

ASKER

Thanks everyone. I knew I could install a new OS on a new drive, etc. but I was hoping to simply install over the top: get updated drivers, but maintain installed program availabilty. Didn't quite happen, though.

The solution (such as it was), was to install a new copy of XP, but to a new folder, e.g. Windows2. XP saw this like a 'dual-boot' set up. When all was done, I could get to the user's data, but had to reinstall programs. Fortunenately, it was not too big a deal for this one.

Thanks again for all the input.

Ted

slink9

So who gets the points?

Fatal_Exception

Thank you TC for the assist.

Happy Holidays!

FE