[geeks] WinXP CD help

[Dan Duncan]

On Jan 2, 2008 3:27 AM, Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm at mendelson.com> wrote:
> What I would do is call Dell first and if they won't help you, call
> Microsoft. Be ready to fax them a photocopy of the sticker and pay them
> a fee for shipping and handling for a new disk.

I'm trying to avoid a hefty fee and mailing time but if it comes to that I'll
go that route.

> If that fails, then the next thing I would do is to copy the CD to a
> directory on a hard drive and replace the bad files with ones from
> a similar CD. My GUESS is that driver.cab will work fine from any
> Pro CD, but I may be wrong.

I tried that but didn't have any luck.  I tried substituting the
non-OEM version of the CD during the retry to read with no luck.
(maybe the volume ID needs to match?)  Then I copied the OEM into a
directory, copied the non-OEM missing files in, and burned it back to
a CD with the correct volume ID.  Still no luck!



I brought this up with a few people at work and was directed to a
process called "slipstreaming" where SP2 can be run against an
existing install CD tree.  Since my install CD is SP1 and I assume
there is an updated driver.cab file in SP2 I'm going to give that a
shot and hope it will replace the corrupted files.  I thought I would
bring it up here in case anyone else runs into this problem.

Procedure here:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp

> If you can't access the hard drive from the laptop, burn it onto a CD.
> As long as the directory structure stays the same, it should work, Since
> the "Tree of Evil" lawsuit, Microsoft does not use copy protection on
> any of their products.

If there is a way to boot to command line or point the install at
another directory from the install CD I have, I haven't found it.

> I am not legal expert, but AFAIK, this would fall within the "fair use"
> provisons of U.S. law, as long as you retain the laptop. The license
> that came with it is for Windows, not only the CD. This would also allow
> you to borrow a CD from someone else if you could find it.

That's my belief as well.  I'm going to a lot of effort to try to stay
within the license I paid for when it would probably be pretty easy to
say "screw it" and google for a product key or a key generator or
something.


-- 
Dan Duncan