DisabledTrucker

Not being sure how they do it, but from what I was told from M$ the keys that are attached to the sides of the case from HP wont work with say an OEM disk that you can purchase from New Egg for example, so unless he was using a new key, or one that was from his MSDN account, then I am unsure how he was able to do it, to a system such as HP/Compaq. For those which have OEM disks such as you can purchase from New Egg included with their systems, using their key attached to the side of their cases, shouldn't have been any different than using one of his from his MSDN account. They figure the "legit" user wouldn't care one way or another and wouldn't want to "personalize" their system beyond what the manufacturer has already done. Furthermore, they can't and don't control how the manufacturer supplies the files to restore the system, and from what they told me was that different compainies have "different licenses" which allow them to do it different ways. Apparently companies such as HP/Compaq, get around the How To Tell (see also attached file,) by putting everything on a restore partition on your hard drive. But if your HDD becomes corrupted you have nothing else to resort to when you replace it. HP/Compaq says that you should send your entire computer back to them and it could take up to 4 weeks for you to get it back, when all it was is a defective hdd, to replace the hdd along with the software. They will reblast a hdd for you and put it in, or at their descrepancy send you a new computer altogether. That for me poses a problem, because if I have a p.o.s. hdd, I am going to ship it back to the manufacturer, and they aren't going to have the O/S to reinstall on it, which leaves it to me. So HP/Compaq, will for another fee send you disks that they, (didn't when I got my computer mention,) say you are responsible for not only providing, but doing yourself the copy of the restoration disks from a utility which, either isn't or barely, documented outside of their website. Someone who is in need of this information, isn't going to look for it untill it is needed, then you have to hunt it down through multiple searches to find it. HP/Compaq feel if you want a copy of these M$ softwares on CD you'll either provide your own disks and use their utility to perform a "backup" of their system, or you can pay them, (about $20 U.S.,) for a copy of them. Which is a complete violation of M$ own policy, as M$ specifically states, that when a purchaser buys a computer that has M$ Windows "blasted" on it, it has to come with the actual CD's to replace that software with if it's destroyed on the HDD for whatever reason. HP/Compaq has since modified their installations so that now it tells you to start with to provide 7-8 CD's to copy this before it will let you into Windows. But that still is not what it says on M$ website, that they are the ones responsible for providing the actual CD's that they used to burn it with to begin with. This is something HP/Compaq cannot do apparently because they only have a "few" copies of the original disks and modify it's installation to "suit them" so they cannot provide the individual owner with these disks. So to me, the individual owner is screwed, unless they either return the entire computer and seek one elsewhere, go out and buy, (at full cost, around $200-300 U.S.) the full version again, or do as they say and live with it. Mind you, if you go the route of buying again the full version of M$ windows, your HP/Compaq's warranty is void and you have to do all the customizing yourself, along with attempting to find the non-existant to barely locatable drivers that your computer will need to install the O/S back. Since your comptuer is an HP/Compaq, (for example of course,) your not going to get the actual manufacturer of the hardware to help you because HP/Compaq even screws around with the hardware to where the actual drivers from the actual manufacturer of the hardware wont work or wont work correctly, so you will need drivers from HP/Compaq to get it to work, which they wont provide unless you either pay extra for them or you somehow modify the drivers they initially shipped with their products to work. I give you some advice in my previous post, but beyond that your on your own, unless someone is willing to allow for me to download from them an .ISO with the disk 2 from both MCE and Tablet for purposes of researching this. Yes, I do have an HP MCE, but I don't have the Disk 1 & 2 from M$, mines all in a "recovery set" that I got from HP to restore my system. It would take me a few days or so, but I believe I could debug it and figure out what it would take to produce a single CD/DVD to do what he is asking. English_SB_License.pdf

Windows Movie Maker 2.1Says, then a look here: Windows Movie Maker 2.1 Download says, *Edited for content.*Therefore one can only assume that it's not part of a download but an inclusion in Windows XP SP2, which is the only way it can be obtained at this time.

It sounds to me like you have one of two problems, 1. Your hard drives are failing and need replaced. 2. You have corrupted the hard drives and need to completely reformat them. My solutions: Unplug all other drives first, except the one your needing to put the O/S on. Go to whomever makes your hard drives and look for their utility that will allow for you to format their drives, most times it will also have a drive test utility built in, if not grab it as well. Download it, copy it per their directions to floppy, then start with the drive you need to load XP on, and wipe it. Once you have it wiped, try running it's test on the drive as well. If that works then continue the following steps otherwise go on down to final suggestion. Now I am assuming it has passed the test, wipe it once more before reinstalling XP on it. Once you have booted into XP and are sure that everything is fine and stable, then try attaching one drive at a time until you either have: A: found the one causing the problem, B: can look at all the connected drives in Computer Management/Disk Manager. Either way you should back up your important info from the other drives and shut off the computer, disconnect the hard drive with your O/S on it, and format those drives using their utilities, test them and reformat them again before using them any more. Make sure to reconnect your O/S hdd back before rebooting after these tests/formats and making sure the floppy isn't in the drive anymore. Do the O/S drive first, then reconnect the others back. *Final Suggestion* If none of these work then you obviously have a bad drive, contact your drive manufacturer if it's still in warranty and have them cross ship you a new one. One final suggestion, check your mobo manufacturers website and make sure you have the updated bios for your mobo, if not download and install it via floppy as well, prior to doing any of the formatting/testing.

Let me get this straight, you want to install Windows XP Pro on a firewire/usb type of HDD? I am not all to sure you can do that.

Most reputible computer manufacturers have a warranty that will allow for replacement of their computers, some are just longer than others. Dell is not the only one with this kind of replacement policy, some you have to pay extra for this others comes with it. Just look when making a choice, if that is important to you. For that matter an Apple has the same type of warranty for example. The difference between Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway, Alienware, and most of the others I metioned is that the ones I just directly mentioned are propietary systems and usually don't come with the O/S on a disk such as you can purchase from New Egg for example, they have a different set up they use where you will need several disks to reinstall their systems, as their computers come with the O/S in a partition on the hard drive, not the best way at all to obtain a copy it. The rest give you the OEM/Full disk from M$ like the disks that you can purchase from New Egg. Some of them even include the actual full version (colored non-oem boxed version,) of the software, dependant on the company purchased from and how purchased. Some over the phone orders from companies will get you the actual full versions instead of the OEM versions if you speak with an actual person when ordering from some of the companies I mentioned. Keep in mind when your looking at the computers, if it actually includes the M$ OEM/Full version disks or not when purchasing, something neither HP/Compaq nor Alienware include with their systems. The best advice I can suggest is to find a company that has a great reseller rating and go from there. Just because a company, (M$, HP/Compaq, Dell, etc,) have the larger base of customers doesn't make them better companies to go with. In HP's case, they have been around almost since the begginning of personal computers, that doesn't in any way make them better, same for the rest. What you really want to look for are complaints about tech support, and return policies, as well as customer support of their products. From what I have gathered from the past few months of research, the best ones to buy from are Cyberpower, Monarch, and the more expensive ones. The more expensive ones are more geared for the enthusiast market, which I assume your not a part of, at least not yet, and would have no use for these more extravagant solutions, unless you have the money to just blow on them for prosterity reasons. In extravagant I am referring to custom cooling solutions, custom cases with or without extreme paint jobs some of which rival those on a Rolls Royce, also they do custom installations as well. Most any custom computer manufacturer will do these customizations if you call them for fee's, but the ones I mentioned such as Voodoo and Falcon NW do them on a more frequent basis, which is why you'd pay more for them. Mostly people who want and can afford the best, who want someone else to build their system, and also want not only the prestige of ownership, but also the most top of the line computing solution for gaming/customizations go for one of these more extravagant solutions. I probably went over your head here, but that is what I am meaning by extravagant. Going beyond all this, $ 4 $, you will do just as good getting a Cyberpower or Monarch system as you would getting a system from Falcon NW, without all the fancy and expensive customizations and it will come with the software on an OEM cd just as if you went to New Egg to purchase it. And I believe you will be happier in the long run.

You only need to change the Master/Slave/Cable Select setting if you have more than one hdd on the same IDE controller. For example, if you have a hdd on IDE 1 and a CD and a DVD on IDE 2, then you don't need it. IF you have two hdd's on IDE 1 and a CD and a DVD on IDE 2, then you would need to make sure that one of the hdd's are set to master and one to slave or both to cable select, if your not sure what your doing. Usually you'd want the drive you have your copy of the O/S on, on drive 1 and the other your using either for a secondary O/S or data backups/etc on drive 2 and Drive 1 would be the master and Drive 2 would be it's slave. Most times, when I have a problem with both drives being set to Master only one drive will work and the other on the slave portion of the cable wont even be recognized, though this may not be the same with all motherboards. To find out if they are being seen correctly or not, look in your bios, (hit either F1 or Del more than likely to access it,) and look there if you see both your hdd's in the initial screen, if not then you have something wrong. *EDIT* BTW, if you do have a CD and a DVD on the secondary IDE, then one of them should be set to Master and the other to Slave as well, it's your choice which is which. I would suggest though that you put the one that your writing to on the Master and the one which is a player only on the secondary. If you have a DVD+/-RW and a CD-RW, put the DVD+/-RW on the master and the CD-RW on the slave, even if the CD-RW is faster, you can always use it to install with on either position without any recognizable differences.

Though you can incorporate the two, I would doubt that unless your able to load it with a DVD, you'd be able to do it all on a CD. If it were possible to put it all on a CD/DVD, then I would suggest you take a look at the folder structure of both disks, and see how they are layed out. If there are files in an i386 folder on the Disk 2, then you would have to worry that your not overwriting something important on the Disk 1, unless it's needed to make it work. You also will want any drivers from the Disk 1 so you can install it once your done slipstreaming everything. Not having Disk 2 myself, I couldn't tell you exactly how to go about doing it. Though I would venture to say, that unless your using the OEM disks from the manufacturer, the key you have wont work with any other purchased copy of the disks as they are usually coded to a certain disk. Which is my problem with HP's MCE that I have. Without the actual OEM disks, I am screwed as I cannot just download the Disk 2 from somewhere and use my copy of XP Pro with the Disk 2 to make the slipstreamed copy using the key I have from my HP computer. From what I was told by M$, the keys that they send to manufacturers such as HP/Compaq, are keyed to certain disks/computers. Therefore, if you go to an OEM supplier and get a copy of a disk from them, (being the same exact O/S version such as XP Home/Professional/MCE/TE,) the key from the HP/Compaq wont work that new disk as it's coded to a certain disk. The key from my Mac OS X Virtual PC version of XP Professional, for example wont work on my PC as either a stand alone copy of XP Professional or on the Virtual PC for the PC. The Home keys I have from my HP Home, won't work with an OEM CD with Home that can easily be purchased from places such as New Egg for use on another computer, as they are keyed to the disks that put them on the comptuer to begin with. Hope you can understand my explanation of this, I realize it's a tad long winded, but that was how it was explained to me by a M$ tech at their 900 number, also what it says on the M$ website, after I did an exhaustive search there for it. I finally found it, from an email they sent me to the link, which I no longer have due to a recent reformat of my HDD's, I lost it.

Yea, when did you get the computer at Best Buy? If you haven't had it for 30 days, then they have to take it back, take it back to them and tell them thanks but no thanks? Then go online and get one from Cyberpower or one of the other reputable dealers online. Monarch is another I would reccomend, as is Shuttle and Alienware, which you can also purchase through Best Buy. (The Alienware is purchaseable through Best Buy in store at thier computer store.) OF course there are others for those with bigger pockets, such as Falcon North West, Velocity Micro, Vicious PC, and Voodoo. Stay away from Dell, unless you get the XPS, and also stay away from Gateway and most definately the HP/Compaq branding. They are nothing compared to what they used to be back in the day. You get what you pay for, $ 4 $, the Monarch and Cyberpower are going to be your best bets. Money being no object, Falcon NW, Voodoo, or Velocity Micro would be my choices, if not able to build it yourself, which would be by far my first choice. Then you get not only what you need/want/can afford, but you get the satisfaction of not only doing it yourself, but also the pride of doing it yourself, while learning at the same time. From someone who has built their own PC's since 1985, I am always learning each time I build a new PC. As far as the service plan goes, it should cover everything with your computer and yes, it should replace your hdd, still I would take and download the format utility from the manufacturer and run it prior to having them mess with it. This way they don't get any information you don't want them knowing off it. Such as passwords, pictures, log-ins etc.

Your talking about two different programs, one is Adobe Acrobat the other is just a reader. The non-reader version is packed with the ability to create PDF's, but the reader-only version only will read those PDF's. Yes the reader-only incorporates "junkware" but it also incorporates into IE, Mozilla, etc. and includes plug-ins to view things that the non-reader doesn't need plug-ins to do, as it's all incorporated into the full program. There are two versions of the installer for Reader. The basic downloads everything from Adobe's website, the full version has everything in it so you only have to download it once, and you would want to have the full version for putting on a CD/DVD install so your not trying to download everything from the internet when you install it. It just saves time and headaches in the future when installing.

In his situation, his best recourse would be to go and get the disks from HP first, also grab the files from his HDD manufacturer and reformat that drive, once he does that and uses the CD set from HP, he will regain control of his HDD. Personally, if you haven't had it for over 30 days, I'd return it to where I got it and get one from either Cyberpower or another online source, that includes a regular cd set from M$ with the O/S on it. If you have a way to put it in another computer first, I would take the HDD out and format it still with it's utility, at least run it 10 times to make sure everything is removed from it and everything is totally zero'd out before I sent it back to them. Especially if you have done any banking or have any other information on your hdd that you don't want someone else knowing. *EDIT* Just having the CD set from HP wont make you, "Just fine" but it should make the installation go smoother, because you will need the drivers from it to install your O/S back onto it. They are only about $20 U.S. for the set to have them ship them to you, $10 of that is for shipping 3 day via UPS. It's $5 to ship via U.S. Mail that takes about 2-3 weeks to get them to you. Once you reformat the HDD and use that set it should go really smoothly, also make sure you tell them you want the ones for 2004 edition with SP2 integrated, as they should provide you with those, since they are the newest updates for the computer. Just follow the brief directions that appear on the screen once you boot the computer with the first CD in the drive.

According to his specs he only has one HDD it's installed with the operating system as a partition on the HDD. IF he obtains the replacement CD's from HP, (usually $20 for the set of 7/8,) then he will be able to reformat his hdd and start over, but it would be best if he had a backup of his files to another hdd first that he wants to save, which he would have to have an O/S on to access those files. Besides all that, since he's not worried about losing what's on the hdd, then he can just download the utility from the manufacturer of his hdd, which can be found on the top of the hdd or from asking HP, then obtaining their utility, (SUTIL or similar,) to format the drive with before he uses the crappy install disks from HP, then he should be able to get rid of the virus that is causing his issue, if not then he will need a new hdd. *EDIT* My Q would be, do you have the disks from HP? Or are you attempting to use some other copy of MCE? You have to have the disks from HP so as to have the drivers that are needed to access the sata drive that is being used with that setup. Doing it from any other version of MCE would require those drivers to be able to access the HDD. IF it's gone beyond the 40 min with the processor you have in there, then you have waited too long, there is either something wrong with the cheap, (more than likely samsung,) hard drive that is included with most HP's these days, or the even cheaper HP DVD burner that's included with them, which I reccomend upgrading both to more reliable equipment as a first result, second result would be to take Astalavista's suggestion and take an axe to it and get a "real" computer! I should mention I have had three of HP's computers, two of them had HP home on them the third is an MCE, 873n, (one of the originals,) and none of them are worth the money spent on them, the MCE was a prize and haven't spent anything on it...but it's still not worth the metal used to produce it.

Who's memory? How much memory do you have in that 286? I like quoting that one best...rofl

No offense taken, and might I suggest around 8-9? Slow yes, nice yes, but not sure about age. As jacmatsu still hasn't grasped the fine art of "Search", or "Google". No, you should see that, just let it do what it needs to to finish installing Windows XP, your fine. What your seeing is natural for an installation of an operating system that is fixing to modify your new hard drive. OF course unless it's fixing to wipe out some data from a partition which already has data on it that is necessary to keep, then you will be in trouble if you let it go on and do what it's saying it's going to do. I recommend backing up whatever you have or finding another partition to put it on.

Which one shows your clock?

I guess I wasn't clear enough, I don't have a problem accessing it from another computer, I don't want to clone it, as that too wont give me what I am looking for. When I install the 7/8 disk collection to the HDD of the HP computers, and shut them off, pull the drives to put them into another computer to grab the D:\Recovery partition, a lot of the files have already been copied over to C:\Pavilion partition as well. Both of these partitions are using different file systems. Recovery is on some weird screwed up version of fat32 and the Pavilion partition is on NTFS. Though HP with the MCE gives a way to perform a CD copy of everything, I end up with what I already have, 7/8 CD's with everything backed up. What I am wanting is one single DVD with all the information on it in a single partition (DVD) so I can upgrade it, change the files/drivers, and then use that single DVD to put it back onto the HDD. It also doesn't solve the other problem I have with accessing these files prior to them being seperated into the different partitions, which is what I am looking for, and need help with. Once I can get that, I can make the DVD and thus should be able to slipstream SP2/2004, along with whatever I want to put in the files/drivers folders, into that and put it back onto the HDD. What your suggesting wont work, as I have already tried it before, with various cloning utilities, (what a waste of money that was!) From further inspection, they seem to use a Windows PE way of installing the O/S with all it's garbage files, is there a way to seperate what is PE and what is the actual O/S? **EDIT** As it's next to impossible to obtain the actual MCE edition, that would be difficult at best to obtain to be able to perform a slipstream of if there's not a way to grab what I need from the HDD or compile the CD's somehow to grab it. And after spending absurd ammounts on these systems, which are supposed to have full versions of the O/S with them on CD, (per M$ rules,) I don't feel as if I should have to fork out another $200 for each copy Home I have, as well, to obtain a copy I can upgrade to SP2 to put back on there. Since their keys wont work with other "real" versions of OEM XP then I am screwed unless I can get what I need from these installs to perform the upgrades I want. Otherwise I would just borrow a CD with OEM home/MCE on it to get what I want.

If you have questions about something that is written on paul's site, I reccomend sending him an email or checking out his forum's as they probably have already been answered there...But yes doing this it should allow for you to install Windows without the use of the floppys to install, if you are using a full version of XP with/without a SP installed, as long as you have performed the process properly. From what I can tell you used one program to burn the disk with, while looking at the directions from another. My reccomendation, once you have made your slipstream, go to the link I gave above, get the files for the O/S version your using, XP PRO, MCE, and TE, all use the CDImage_Pro, and for Home, you use the CDImage_Home. Using it by it's included directions, you should be able to make an ISO file. IF you don't already have it, I suggest you find DVDDecrypter from it's dot com site and download the latest version of it. There is directions there as well as on this site, (not to mention 1000's of others,) that tell how to use it's ISO feature. Open the ISO file you made with it, and burn that file to CD/DVD and reboot to it, it should work just fine if you don't encounter any errors with the program. Should you encounter any errors with it, I reccommend looking in the forums for DVDDecrypter at it's site first, and shooting a response out there first before trying another site for the answer. The guy who writes DVDDecrypter spends a lot of time answering posts there on his own, though he doesn't always get to them all, he has others there that pretty much know what is going on to help him out when he's not available. For a free program, this has got to be one of the best supported around that I have used, besides Shareaza. Anyways, it's rather quick and painless as I have since used it to burn many an ISO to CD/DVD so far. His settings are really easy to understand, and the program is rather configurable, such as the ability to pull DVD's from store bought copies, which I wont go into on here, but even that is possible from it, as that was it's main purpose to begin with. Once you burn the CD/DVD it should work without errors when you load it up. Next time I reccomend using the directions that are abundant from this site as to how to go about doing slipstreams/unattended installs.

Been OTLO 4 it, but haven't seen it, maybe I was looking in the wrong place?!? This is the thread I was looking for it in, is this wrong?

yes, basically, it's not from M$ from what I gather, but one which is equivilant.

My solution would be to purchase a gateway/router which can be picked up for less than $100 U.S., and solve 90% of your problems, if not 100%.

YQW glad to be of whatever assistance.

No thanks, I am not ready for M$ to control my DRM yet, don't much care for it being integrated into WMP9 but at least it's still able to be cut out of it in v9. Besides, the last beta of it worked like crap on all my test systems, so I will stick with v9 till I have to upgrade, then I more than likely will go another route, as I am not impressed with being told where and how I can listen to my purchases.

Just go here: Finalising your Unattended XP CD and download the files you need there, you don't need the M$ version, it also compiles your XPCD to an ISO file for you so it's ready to burn to CD/DVD, which you can do with DVDDecrypter, Nero, or the like. You can also just pull that file from the download for CDImage_Pro/Home (*dependant on your version of XP*) which is on that page.

You installed SP2 on it...lol Seriously, which version of SP2 are you using? What steps did you take to install SP2? Which particular drivers are we talking about? (I am assuming video, but need to be sure.) Finally, what are the exact errors your getting in these blue screens? Need in particular what it says as far as any codes, (0x000000,etc) as well as if it gives any particular information, (device driver from ATI caused page fault,) if available. Also, did you try to F8 prior to booting into Windows and upgrading/reinstalling your video card drivers?

Not sure if this has been asked and answered before here, but doing a search of HP backup turned up nothing I was looking for. Basically, I want to do a back up of an HP computer so as to have a full DVD of all of the files etc prior to booting it up for the first time, once that is done it seperates the files and puts some on the newly created "C:\Pavilion" partition while leaving the rest on the "D:\Recovery" partition. What I am trying to do is make a full backup of my XPHome/XPMCE so I can add the SP2/2004 upgrade to it prior to installing it, since the only disks I seem to be able to get from HP are multiple CD's with the full backup on it, not the actual disks from M$ with the O/S on it, then all the B.S. extras that they include with the system on seperate CD's, everything is combined. Since it's this way, I was looking at incorporating SP2/2004 upgrade into the "D:\Recovery" partition prior to initial boot so I don't have to do it later everytime I have to "recover" their crappy installs, due to file deletions of unnecessary crap they install on their systems. My final result will be I will replace their crappy software with software of my choice on this DVD with the slipstreamed version of XPSP2/2004 to include on future "recoveries". Though I could attempt to purchase another copy of the operating system, I got screwed by HP by buying their crappy systems and not being given a copy of the actual software on CD's when I purchased the systems. Had I known this at the time, I wouldn't have purchased their crap to begin with, but now I am stuck and need a reasonable solution. I have the disks to replace both the XPhome/MCE editions back on these computers but I want to consolidate them into a DVD with the incorporated SP/software of my choice. TIA for any assistance that can be given on this subject.

I only noticed those in the reg file after I went and copied it from Regedit after installing SP2, they were already that way except the netfx one. That I changed to 1 later, wondering if that will allow for the installation, if done in a reg file when installing.