[geeks] WinXP CD help

[Lionel Peterson]

Have you looked at the torrent sites for an OEM .ISO image? An XP SP2 .ISO
shouldn't be too hard to find... Some may include activation keys, but you
don't have to use them...

Lionel

-----Original Message-----
From: "Dan Duncan" <danduncan at gmail.com>
To: "The Geeks List" <geeks at sunhelp.org>
Sent: 1/2/2008 9:28 PM
Subject: Re: [geeks] WinXP CD help

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
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