My bad #1 - I -should- have said "any 32-bit" since that was what the Topic was about. -YES- you must boot to the DVD (set in the BIOS) of the failng PC. -AND- if you use any 3d Party Software (e.g. ImgBurn) then -DO- set the Burn Speed to -NO MORE THAN- 4x because anything above that -usually- (IMHO) gives a Bad Burn.

My bad #2 - that's Shift+F10 to access Command Prompt (in the Windows Preinstall Environment). (Old-Timer's I guess...)

 

Lastly, that XP-Home, you STILL have to get the Internal Key and the four "special" files and rebuild the CD.

A "hint" about that here - http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/82638-oemscan-automated-multi-manufacture-pre-activation-utility/

Specifically, this Topic - http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/63258-building-a-pre-activated-cd-from-an-existing-installation/

With eBay CD -

1 - Get the four files "somehow" (from the Failing XP HDD),

2 - Get the Internal Key from the Registry "somehow" (from the Failing XP HDD),

3 - Copy your Newly Acquired CD (from eBay) to the Win7's HDD,

4 - Copy the ReCompressed four files to the I386 Folder,

5 - Intregrate SP3 (if needed),

6 - CreateISO/Burn to CD.

Easiest to "recreate" the OEM CD with nLite and burn w/ImgBurn (at 8x for CD's).

-DO NO nLite TWEAKING AT ALL!-

Use Internal Key for the Install/RepairInstall.

 

Sorry and HTH

oh boy, I'm really confused now. I have to return the Win 7 computer tomorrow eve, at least for a few days. The ebay CD hasn't been mailed yet, from seller. Will go out monday, so they say,&  comes with sp3 already installed on it.

 

I don't understand about 4 special files, and what is an internal key, is it what came on the sticker on the bottom of my laptop? 

 

I don't think my HDD is failing, it's only 3 years old.

 

Imgburn was set to max just changed it to 4x

 

Not sure how I would "tweak" nLite?

 

Both of the above links send me to error page, and then many many articles, don't see anything like what is refereed to in above post.
 

I have a dvd now, should I try to burn it with win7 32 bit on imgburn at 4x speed and see if I can now get to the error by Run "CHKDSK C: /R" ?

Edited August 4, 201412 yr by <3DPRSNOW

I tried to burn the win7 32 bit, using imgburn on 4x instead of max, but it failed, reason- illegal mode for this track, and now I have no more disks. Here are the errors, the disk is still in the drive and I have not closed imgburn, is there a way to reburn using max speed since that worked the rest of the burns that I did? After 2nd retry I clicked cancel for a third, can I bring that dialog box back up choose max and retry again, since I have not closed the app yet and I've still got the disk in, and have not ended the session?

Edited August 4, 201412 yr by <3DPRSNOW

 

I don't think my HDD is failing, it's only 3 years old.

 

Not to put you down but that kind of reasoning makes no sense whatever .

 

Hard disks may fail, as well as filesystems residing on *any* media.

Last character in the above sentence is a "full stop" or "period".

 

They may fail within the first few weeks, within the first few months, within the first few years.

They will be working fine and then, one day, they will stop working properly.

Whether the issue will be and easy fixable one or more generally a fixable one or not is another thing

 

Especially on a laptop, there is no reliable predictive algorithm or calculation on a hard disk drive life.

 

jaclaz

I'm assuming it's not defective, I've had nothing to suggest it, but I did have a power outage 2 days before the issue, and I did do a hard shut down, the night before the issue. So I have my fingers crossed that, that is the cause and not HDD failure. The original HDD showed some signs of something going wrong, I guess I was thinking this one would also.

Edited August 4, 201412 yr by <3DPRSNOW

Sure , and at a 95% probability it is just a simple filesystem corruption that CHKDSK will be able to fix easily, I was commenting on the statement in itself, without hinting that in your specific case a failed hard disk is likely to have happened.

 

If you prefer, I do believe that in your case the hard disk has not failed, but the fact that it has not failed is not connected in any way to the (relatively short) time it was in operation.

 

Carpenter's example:

During inspection of a house:

I don't think this roof will collapse any soon, it was built only three years ago. <- makes sense

 

During inspection of a house that suffered from extensive fire damages:

I don't think this roof will collapse any soon, it was built only three years ago. <- makes no sense

 

 

I don't think this roof will collapse any soon. <- OK in both the above cases .

 

jaclaz

Edited August 4, 201412 yr by jaclaz

re - the "bad burns" -

http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?/topic/21415-verification-issue/

Same model burner, same Media.

I'm really unsure of why you just didn't use the built-in burning software, but whatever...

 

This appears to be the burner specs -

http://burners.burn4free.com/toshiba-samsung-storage-technology-corporation/tsstcorp-sn-208ab.htm

 

Maybe, -just maybe- it burned ok. Seems "odd" that the x64 ISO burned ok, otherwise.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/172356-xp-home-sp3-in-reboot-loop-no-f8no-bsod-oem-sp1-need-slipstream-bd/#entry1083219

 

HTH (the most I can find)

Everyone from ms-forums, suggested imgburn originally, but instead of listening (didn't want to download to this computer) I used the native software burner. When the Hiren's disk, burned ok, & booted ok, but didn't have any desktop except a background picture, I thought maybe they were correct about the native software. So this time after burning the 64 bit, and it went ok with imgburn, I thought all was fine with it. I asked the question on the imgburn forum, they told me never use that type of disc. I don't think it ever finished burning, The pop up came right after shutting the dvd player the 2nd time. I did try to boot it, but all I got was the same black screen that I get with no disk, in the drive.

(sigh...) I *really* don't want to talk about it, but "that CD" is a CD Image. Did you *really* burn it to a CD or *did you* burn it to DVD?

 

Different approach - Do you have a USB Stick of at leat 4gb? It's entirely possible to boot a DVD Image from it.

Here are the appropriate links -

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/154171-install-windows-7-x86-windows-7-x64-server-2008-from-iso-images-in-a-usb-hd/

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/firawiniso <=Main one to use

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/grub4dos

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/grub4dos/grub4dos-internal-variables-and-functions

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

Simply speaking, you Prep the USB according to the Tutorial (Main one, others are more-or-less informational), stick the USB Flash Drive in a port, turn the PC on, select the USB Flash Drive in BIOS (instead of CD/DVD), boot to the ISO Image, do the "Shift+F10" trick, then proceed to "find" the HDD Drive Letter and check it. No need to bother with *anything* additional (e.g. modifying the "unattended" stuff - the Supplied Default one is fine). I've done this on an old eMachine with 1.5gb RAM in it. Not really sure what the "minimum" might be - *may* be the size of the WinPE WIM Image. IOW, forget using a Physical DVD, use the ISO directly.

(((If the notebook is from 2004-2005, there is a chance it doesn't boot from USB. Using PLOP as a workaround means ...burn one more cd))).

yes I used a dvd, didn't know that I couldn't, I tried a cd first, but it wasn't big enough, so I used a dvd. I have tried to use my usb, I used rufus as suggested from the MS forums, it didn't work, don't know why, before I overwrote it, the usb was a sandisk cruzer U3 with launch pad, & vault, and I had booted from it when my old hardrive died, using ubuntu. I will read your links, before taking back this laptop this eve.

 

it is 4gb, but now that it has been reformated with rufus, can I still burn the image to it?

Edited August 5, 201412 yr by <3DPRSNOW

You might try RMPREPUSB and see if it DOES boot. It *should* at least say "OS is Missing" (or something of a sort). Rufus is *not* the same as the links I gave. Same concept, two different methods. If it *does* boot to it, then you're in business.

 

Different approach - Do you have a USB Stick of at leat 4gb? It's entirely possible to boot a DVD Image from it.

Here are the appropriate links -

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/154171-install-windows-7-x86-windows-7-x64-server-2008-from-iso-images-in-a-usb-hd/

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/firawiniso <=Main one to use

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/grub4dos

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/grub4dos/grub4dos-internal-variables-and-functions

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

Simply speaking, you Prep the USB according to the Tutorial (Main one, others are more-or-less informational), stick the USB Flash Drive in a port, turn the PC on, select the USB Flash Drive in BIOS (instead of CD/DVD), boot to the ISO Image, do the "Shift+F10" trick, then proceed to "find" the HDD Drive Letter and check it. No need to bother with *anything* additional (e.g. modifying the "unattended" stuff - the Supplied Default one is fine). I've done this on an old eMachine with 1.5gb RAM in it. Not really sure what the "minimum" might be - *may* be the size of the WinPE WIM Image. IOW, forget using a Physical DVD, use the ISO directly.

The link marked "main one", takes you to a page that says it is "out of date" and to now use easy2boot, redirects you to their site easy2boot.com, I will attempt to follow directions for this software and see what happens.

 

Question, should it be formatted as NTFS or Fat32, for windows7? thank you

edit= used ntfs

Edited August 6, 201412 yr by <3DPRSNOW

also haven't been able to access the bios through f2, but can press escape key and choose bootable device from there, and I have the choice, of PM-WD5000BEVT-22A0RT0, SM Sony DVD RW DW-D56A, Network, or "Removable Dev" the last one is correct choice for usb, right? When I choose Removable Dev. I get sent back to the black screen with the menu of safe mode, safe mode with networking, last best known, etc. Same thing that happened with Rufus, and Hirens usb bootable, before that.

 

I am positive the usb works, because when burning it, it ran a test environment on the win7 lap, and all was perfect, just as the video instructions showed, but after that portion of the video, it did continue with instructions for formatting your hdd, which I didn't listen to, because I don't want to reformat it.

 

Oh, btw, was told tonight I can keep using the win7 for a couple more days...

Edited August 6, 201412 yr by <3DPRSNOW

I am missing the model of your Sony laptop.

Some of them are known to have issues booting from USB.

Can you post (or re-post) the EXACT model of that laptop?

 

jaclaz