Dell Xp Home Disc

[Duke Atreides]

I was looking around at a Good WIll and stumbled on a box of cd software for $1 that was pretty much totally useless exept for an old game I used to love and...

 

A Dell XP Home disc.

 

I was working on a comp for a person and needed to reformat and reistall, normally I will used the jellybean proggy to extract the cd key then use my own XP cd and put in the extracted key. But my XP disc is pre SP1 thus many more updates must be downloaded.

 

The Dell cd I got was SP1 so I used it instead, I reformatted the harddrive and did a fresh install, except it never asked me for a key or to activate Windows. I am a bit confused and am wondering if I need to do the old reformat/reinstall thing with my cd to put in the key yada yada yada...

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

/edit

 

I said THANKS for your help, not thanks for reading it only...

Edited September 18, 2004 by Duke Atreides

[henbenley]

I think that when you do something like that it uses the cd-key that dell has inegrated into the disk to make things easier for a computer dummy to figure out. So if i'm right then you would be using someone elses cd-key on this new computer. Depending on whether you are the most concerned about having piracy problems if MS comes knocking on your door then I would slipstream your disk with all of the new updates and then always use that for all of your installations. I'm gonna go find a guide to slipstreaming the disk in a minute, I'll be right back to edit.

 

edit: heres a guide i found at viperlair, not sure how good it is but here goes

 

http://www.viperlair.com/articles/howto/so...ream/winxpsp1a/

Edited September 18, 2004 by henbenley

[lordofbeer]

Dell and Gateway do not use cd key's on there XP Cd's. I had to call Tech support because I was fixing a laptop for somebody. I asked the tech guy if I reformated where would I get the new cd key from. He laughed and said there cd's dont have a key, and sure enough I did a clean install and it never asked for it.

[henbenley]

I know that they dont ask for them but I was thinking that the cd that shipped with the computer would kind of automatically put a cd-key in the right spot in the registry and everything, otherwise wouldnt there be windows problems and such.

[lordofbeer]

hmm, I'll have to check it out monday when i get back to work. I'll look in the registry and see what they have. But the guy made it sound like there version doesnt use a key.

[airman]

Dell and Gateway do not use cd key's on there XP Cd's.

hey now, i have the dell version of pro and it asks me to activate every time!

 

is it supposed to?

[DECwakeboarder]

What is this Jelleybean proggy you speak of? Will it allow me to reformat and use the same CD key? I need to find something that will allow me to do that because I am in need of a reformat soon

[henbenley]

the jellybean program just shows you your current cd-key, and i think that it also lets you change cd-keys without reformating

 

and once you write down the cd-key you can reformat and use that cd-key that you got

 

it works great if you've lost your key and need to find it

[Duke Atreides]

Wakeboarder,

 

Magic Jellybean Download page There you go. Nice little program, I have what amounts to a Utility Disc that includes this program.

 

Thanks for the replies, I went ahead and tried reinstalling again and still was never asked for a key...

 

Maybe this is cool B)

[Reidhardt]

I read a guide on making a unattended XP install, where you don't have to input your cdkey or anyother information. It's likely this is what Dell has done, so there is a cdkey, it's just automatically entered for you.

[henbenley]

Yea thats what I was saying, the disk holds the key and just inputs it instead of asking you for it.

[suchuwato]

dad brought a load of monitor boxes home from work with about 6-7 xp pro discs in. they are the dell ones - you need to get a key from somewhere....