Right guys, I have been given a laptop to format and fix and i dont want to have to use the key on the bottom of the lappy.

Here lies problem number 1. I cannot boot the system as its fubar so cannot get the Cd Key from the XP home install. Is there any way i can recover this?

Problem 2. I have been reading the thread reguarding OEMbios files and so on. what do i need to get from the laptop to make an unattended install disk preactivated?

Thanks for your help in advance guys n galls.

http://www.msfn.org/board/Building-Pre-act...ion-t63258.html

You can put your bad drive in another system and attach the registry. REGEDIT, click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, File Load Hive, and browse your old drive to find \WINDOWS\system32\config\SOFTWARE which probably won't be on the C drive, then pick a random name like zzz. Then you modify the scripts to read the OEMBIOS files off the other drive letter and read the key from the zzz subkey.

You can also copy and compress the OEMBIOS files yourself, and use this tool to decode the DigitalProductID remembering that the key you want is in the zzz subkey.

http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/window...t-key-recovery/

Edited December 13, 200718 yr by severach