slipstreamed OEM CD won't activate

[whistler114]

First of all let me say what a fantastic forum this is. The amount of information on here is incredible.

edited slightly

I have an HP machine with the original restore CD. I wanted to do a re-install of XP but I thought I'd slipstream it first.

I copied the restore CD contents to my hard drive, opened up oobe.ini and pasted the CD key to a notepad file. I grabbed RyanVM's latest update pack and fired up nLite . I made a few small tweaks and filled in all the data needed to make it unattended and pasted the key from oobe.ini. So far so good, burned the ISO and started the install.

I have double checked the key and the winnt.sif that nLite created and it matches the original, but for some reason it's saying I have to activate Windows and that my key was typed in wrong. I don't understand - I am using the original CD with the original OEM pre-activated key (with a few updates) on the original machine! Am I missing something?

Edited July 15, 2007 by whistler114

[whistler114]

Problem solved. I went to www.oembios.net and downloaded the OEMBIOS files for my HP machine. Copied them into the respective folders and now it says it's activated.

They are different to the ones that came on my restore CD - very strange.

Whoever created that OEMBIOS dump, thank you!

Edited July 15, 2007 by whistler114