I'm working on a friend's computer, its a Dell Dimension 5150, along with that they never gave them a OS disk or recovery disk, so I'm sitting here with my thumb up you know where on what to do. My friend has a key and license for his copy of Windows, I need to reformat and reinstall, I need a to know what I need to do exactly to create a disk that won't (when I go to activate within Windows) tell me the key is invalid or some such technical difficulty. I have two supposedly dell oem home versions of windows xp sp2 and sp3. I'm hoping that the they will work but I just need to know that they will work or what I need to do to get them to work without running in to activation or key issues once the operating system is installed. I also have a few windows pro sp2 vlk copies that all have legitimate keys but I'm not sure those will work either. He has a legitimate key of windows and a coa sticker, we just don't have the disk to format and reinstall windows, and I'm worried about him not having a activated copy of windows until Dell can send a disk. My primar y question what can I do to ensure he has a activated copy of windows with his key? I'm sorry if this sounds like desperation and I'm probably exaggerating the problem too, but I just want this to work and I'm not entirely familar with creating a pre-activated install disk. Many thanks for any replies, I'm sorry if this has been answered/posted before as well.
Are they Dell OEM disks or not? If they are then you are good to just install it, otherwise you can read here on the forum to learn how to creat OEM disk sebus
They have dell files in their $OEM$ folders, so yeah they're dell oems. My only concern at that point is if they're were different versions and one may or may not be with X brand or series of Dell computers. Here's the list of files. !Dell_XP.cab !DPHFRM.CAB !PCVENXP.CAB ATAPI.EXE CMDLINES.TXT DELL.INF dellbutn.htm DELLSUPPORT.ICO E-wtrmrk.gif OEMINFO.INI OEMLINK.BAT OEMLOGO.BMP PCHEALTH.BAT sol_vent.jpg I also have the key, so lets say if I put that key in the winnt.sif file and remade the image would it work?
Well, download a Windows XP Home OEM cd and use the COA and activate it by phone. And to test the key, just insert the windows cd when running windows, a popup window will tell you that you cant upgrade, choose to make a clean install, cdkey window pops up, just abort the installation after it.
My question now is this, since that disk came with a winnt.sif file, and it had a product key line in, if I had changed that key to the actual key of the one provided on the case, would have it even required activation? I did have to change the key using the regedit oobe method today after installation and it activated over the net without issue.
Let me reiterate just to make it clear. The computer is a Dell Dimension 5150 with a Large Manufacturer Pre-installed Windows COA of Blue/Green type with keyboard. I found and downloaded a Windows XP Home SP3 OEM Dell disk and burned it on to a CD-RW. I formatted the HDD and reinstalled using that disk. I checked activation, the key provided (the key that came with the downloaded disk not the COA product key) was not a valid key. I changed the product key using the oobe.exe /a method. I changed the key to the one that is on the COA sticker and successfully activated the OS using the online activation. Are you telling me the OS is not activated even though the online activation was successful? I just want to be perfectly clear here.
What you need to do is search forum for oembios.exe and run that or SLIC Dump ToolKit V2.1 Final that will let you know the crc number of the oembios files required it maybe a dell box with a none dell motherboard.