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Windows XP Media Center 2005 ISO

I am repairing a corrupted Windows installation on a computer that has XP media center 2005. I need to do a repair installation but don't have a media center install disk. I have XP Home and Pro disks but they won't work because the activation keys are different.

Is there anywhere I can get an install ISO so I can repair the installation? I don't need the key, just the install disk.

SOLUTION

Gary Case

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northernknight

ASKER

When I used the Pro disk to do a repair install, it asked for the XP Pro license in the middle of installing Windows.

Gary Case

You need to type in the Media Center key -- trust me, the disks are IDENTICAL. I've got both the Media Center pair and an XP Pro disk => I made ISO's of all of these. The ISO of XP Pro and the ISO of disk 1 of the 2 Media Center disks are identical => bit-by-bit.

The difference is in the key -- it "knows" from the key what you're installing.

Gary Case

... it's true, however, that it may very well require the 2nd disk to complete the repair install ==> I'm not sure if that will be the case or not. It definitely needs it to do a complete Media Center installation.

northernknight

ASKER

I tried putting in the Media Center key, but it doesn't work. It's looking for a Win XP Pro volume license key. It seems that instead of just doing a repair it thinks it is an upgrade, but I did the repair install from booting to the disk.

Gary Case

Ahh -- you're not using a retail XP Pro disk ... you're using a VLK version. That is NOT the same as the media center disk.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any downloadable ISO's for Media Center.

If you find some downloads, you can confirm their the right ones with the following:

The ISO for CD#1 is 587MB (616,308,736 bytes)
The ISO for CD#2 is 258MB (270,841,856 bytes)