gateway windows XP home killing me

[Hans5849]

So my dad bought a gateway computer a while back and after my brother and sister destroyed it with spyware and viruses i took most of the parts picked up a case, PSU, and mobo and built them a decent computer.

Well last week the hard drive died (it was a crappy one any ways) and i replaced it with a nice 200GB WD SATA. Well now i have to install windows again with out having to use the orig gateway XP install CD. So i borrowed a coppy of XP home from a friend and ripped what i needed from it and set up a unattended install. Well the product key that gateway provided wasn't valid with the real version of XP and im stuck.

I have a valid key so i don't want to go and find one on the net to use, but i really need this computer working (im tired of them using my nice box). I called MS they told me to call gateway, gateway told me to call MS. So im woundering if you guys have something that i could do, because if i don't get this solved soon im going to call up gateway and microsoft at the same time and then let them have it.

-Ready to kill

[dman]

use the product key from the retail version but do not activate. Then use xppid to change key (or hack the reg, the tool makes it easy though) and replace with legal gateway key.

http://ryan.ript.net/xppid/

some gateways are "pre-activated", so hopefully you don't have trouble when you try to activate with good key.

Edited September 1, 2005 by dman