Windows XP Reinstall, no disc.

[Poppa_Meth]

A lady I work with got a dell 4500 off of her daughter in law. Its become heavily infested with spyware to the point that the OS has been compromised. System files have gone missing and whatnot. Ad-aware and Spybot both lock up during scans on it. I'm seeing a complete reinstall as the only option. Unfortunately, she made the classic mistake of not getting all the original discs with it. Her daughter in law has moved twice since then and evidently lost the discs as well. Dell won't send you any replacement discs after 21 days since purchase. She's either left with dropping another $100 for a full copy of XP Home SP2 or me finding a work around.

Now I have my Dell OEM WinXP SP1 disc and a copy of it that I've slipstreamed with SP2. Anyone know if its possible to reinstall her computer from my disc, but using her CD Key which I can still get out of the PC before reformat? I know some companies lock the CD to a specific computer like HP does. Not sure on Dell though. I'd hate to start the process not knowing in advance.

[tekkieman]

IMO, the safest way legally, would be for her to purchase an OEM copy. That said, I have two Dells that are 2 years old. While the OEM OS disks are keyed to a Dell BIOS, they are not keyed to specific machines. At least they weren't two years ago. Dell uses a master image to preload all their desktops from, and are given a number of bulk licenses.

That said, any Dell OEM disk should work, and activation with her key should work fine, especially if the last activation was more than 60 days ago.

[Cobra]

I don't see why any Dell XP disk shouldn't work. Surely if you use her key, then you are in effect simply using her copy of XP. She paid for that key.

Dell are being very stingy not sending out new discs like that, considering you bought an entire computer from them. Give Microsoft a shout and ask them - I've always found them to be helpful when you are in a tight situation.

[stiltman]

Yep, use her key with any XP (OEM) CD and you'll be fine.

If your Dell CD does the full install without asking you, you'll prolly spend a lot of time removing the installed drivers (yours) and installing the right ones (hers)

Just checked one of my CDs, you'll be fine


Edit: Before you do a full install, go to dell and download all the current drivers

[Poppa_Meth]

Actually the way dell is setting up their systems now the drivers are on a seperate disc and need to be installed seperately after installing the OS. I've also downloaded all her updated drivers from the support site to install.

So can I effectively make a copy of my slipstreamed disc for her to use with her cd key just like it was her original disc? This in case she should need to have it reinstalled again at a later time and I'm not around to do it.

Also I've asked about this on the Dell Forums and this proceedure was mentioned.

http://www.jsiinc.com/subn/tip6600/rh6623.htm

Here is the link to the topic itself.

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=129249

Just wondering if this proceedure is really necessary? If so making her a copy for future use wouldn't work too well since she'll have no idea of how to do this proceedure.

[ViRaL1]

You probably won't have to CHANGE any keys, just use the one supplied with her PC when you install XP. Although they'd love to make the money on a full XP purchase, what they mainly care about is that each key is valid and only being used for one computer. The CD itself isn't as big of an issue. If they really cared that much they could have easily copy protected it.

[Poppa_Meth]

Yeah I was honestly surprised to find the XP CD isn't copy protected. Seems like I heard something about it having a copy protection when it first came out but evidently that was false. So long as I can get it to work the way I need it to work that's all that matters to me. I'd rather not pay Dell or Microsoft more money for something that's already been paid for anyway.

[ViRaL1]

Product Activation is their protection.

[hech54]

I've got a 4500....XP Pro....with the original restore discs...in GERMAN...

I personally would try a program called Hijackthis before relying on Spybot and Adaware to tell you your system is screwed.

[Poppa_Meth]

I haven't used Hijack This yet and am reluctant to do so on someone elses computer for the first time. However as bad as the thing is loaded with worthless software a complete reinstall is still the best idea IMO.

[hech54]

On the other hand....if it(the computer) is so fudged up already....what can it hurt?....

[Poppa_Meth]

It seems that Dell OEM discs have the Key slipstreamed into them. You don't enter it during installation. Guess that's why you have to change it in the registry. At leasts that's what I'm hearing on their forums.

[Poppa_Meth]

No one would happen to know how I could change the slipstreamed key to make her a new CD would they?

[handyguy]

Dell uses Bios activation, activates from the bios. I have a 4550, & the key is printed on the side of the computer. I don't know if the disks can be copied, but I don't see why not.

[Garibaldi]

A lady I work with got a dell 4500 off of her daughter in law. Its become heavily infested with spyware to the point that the OS has been compromised. System files have gone missing and whatnot. Ad-aware and Spybot both lock up during scans on it. I'm seeing a complete reinstall as the only option. Unfortunately, she made the classic mistake of not getting all the original discs with it. Her daughter in law has moved twice since then and evidently lost the discs as well. Dell won't send you any replacement discs after 21 days since purchase. She's either left with dropping another $100 for a full copy of XP Home SP2 or me finding a work around.

You know what you could try that would be worth a try is the Antithesis live-cd. Its a linux live-cd distro that scans your windows ntsf partition (thanks to the 2.6 kernel and captive ntsf it does write to ntsf) for all sorts of malicious programs (viruses and spyware... ect) and lets you get rid of them. Just pop the cd in at boottime, windows never starts so there is no chance of background programs running and keeping you from deleting them. You might be able to replace the system files that you need with another live-cd operation after you have fixed the viruses. This is at least worth a try, at this point you have nothing to loose. Here is the link to the cd:
http://www.antesis.org/index.php?lang=en

[stiltman]

Dell uses Bios activation, activates from the bios. I have a 4550, & the key is printed on the side of the computer. I don't know if the disks can be copied, but I don't see why not.

Must be something new to the 4500 series

I know it doesn't work that way in the GX series and the 4200/300 series.
It an actual file that does it, but for the life of me I can't remember (dell certified with a brain fart). If I remember I'll let you know. By memory (brain fart again) I'm pretty sure it's in hex though (searching through my notes)

[Poppa_Meth]

I've heard of the Linux distro you are talking about but at this point I still think a full reinstall is in order just to clean out all the junk thats on it. Thanks for the mention though.

Stiltman, if you run across that please let me know. It would be quite helpful. I'm holding off on making a new copy for now since it'll be Saturday until I get to the reinstall. Never done much with hex editing but if you can give me the info on how to do it I'll be more than happy to screw around with it for awhile.

[stiltman]

Memory again. If I'm not mistaken, all it does is pre-enter the key. It doesn't actually bypass that screen. You should be able to just enter her key instead. I know this is how I used sysprep in the past. Sysprep is the same thing Dell uses for it's images just a dumbed down version, can't think of the name of it off hand.

[Poppa_Meth]

I guess I'll find out on that when I do the reinstall. According to the guys on the Dell forums it DOES skip the key entry screen. They say you shouldn't be prompted for the key at all. I've reinstalled XP on a work computer a while back but for the life of me I can't recall if it prompted for a key or not. My memory is going too

[smearbrick1]

I have a dimension 8400 with XP Sp1. The XP cd that came with my 8400 requires me to input the CD Key. In fact, my last dell (dimension 8100) required that I do the same.

[Poppa_Meth]

I'm hoping this one does the same. That'll make things a lot easier for a future reinstall.