Windows Xp Home Sp1 Key Needed *read Please & Help!!*

Hello,

right there is abit of a long long long story behind this one but i am only going to be speaking about the things that are needed.

I have a Computer here with Windows XP Home installed on it. The HDD has had a problem causing it not to be able to boot into Windows. Now i want to do a reinstall of Windows XP but i can't without a product key...
being a customers PC and so on.

So i am wondering if anyone knows of a way to get it into windows or a way for me to find out the product key without it booting into windows by plugging it into another machine and reading the files that way. If i could get it in Windows i would be able to find the Key myself then.

So any ideas will be most helpfull.

What the machine is currently doing is allowing me to select Safe Mode or Normal Mode but it just crashes more or less as soon as you choose one of the options.

I look forward to your help once again guys and girls!

Thank you.

Craig Jones.

 

When you say won't boot, does it give an error message ?
If you let us know, there may be a way of fixing it.
I had one the other day with the "NTLDR is missing" message. I used a FIXNTLDR floppy to boot into windows, then did a repair install. Got it working fine without having to spend ages setting everything up again.

 

Nope, it just crashes. Num Lock won't even work... i have tried fixing the boot record and so on but nothing.

Is there a way of finding out the Product Key from reading the HDD on another machine?

 

Have you tried removing all but essential hardware, and then seeing if it will boot ?

As for accessing the product key with the HD installed in another machine, I'm sure that question has been asked and answered on here before, but I don't remember what the outcome was.

 

Be nice to know about it... i will try removing it down to things thats needed to just get it booting. I think its just the install is messed up from the HDD cocking up to be honest! It was recovering files when i plugged the HDD into another machine soon as it went on.

PCWorld's fault it is! He has an upgrade to Windows XP by them a wile back and they never did give him a Licence or anything or put it on the case... thats why he is taking them to court :S lol

 

Yes. You can do this two ways. Remove the drive, slave it to a PC running a healthy Windows XP, download ProduKey from here http://majorgeeks.com/ProduKey_d4953.html and extract (unzip) it. Move the .exe from the Produkey folder to your root drive (C: for example). Click Start, click Run, now type c:\produkey.exe /regfile "f:\windows\system32\config\software" exactly as it is here. Note the space between the .exe and the /regfile. There's also a space between /regfile and the first quote. In the example, drive F: is the drive letter of the slaved drive you need the key from. This works. I've done it numerous times. If you don't have a 2nd PC, you can boot to a PE CD (UBCD4Win) and run Produkey from a floppy disk or a USB thumb drive.... good luck and let us know you get along.

 

This is the sorta of answer i was looking for... thank you for this...

i have just tried to do it so far looking good going to try using the product key to do a repair of windows to get the information from it then put a new HD in there as the current one is pretty much F****ED to be honest!

Thank you for this will let you know if it works out. Looks like the corrent one as i know what product key was used for the windows on the healthy system!

Will let you know in abit! Thanks again everyone!

 

Hey,

i went through all of this word for word no mistakes. But it failed sadly!

I did however get a Key which was different from the one i installed on the healthy XP Machine. But where it came from i don't know but when i did try to do the reinstall using the key pulled from the nopn healthy XP HD it simply wouldn't work with ANY XP CD i had!

So i don't know if this is a bad one off but i will be trying tha6t method again in the future when i come accross it as it will come in handy no doubt!

Thanks for the help!

I have another Windows XP questions i have posted today also if your intrested or able to answer!!!

 

Keys are tied to different varieties (at least in the US and I suspect it works the same way in the UK). If the key on the bad computer was an OEM key then it will only work when used with an OEM XP CD. If the CDs you have are Home or Pro, it does make a difference.
On one of my computers, the key in the computer did not match the MS manual with the halographic on it. I suspect the manufacturer used 1 CD with a key on it to install windows on all computers they shipped. When I re-installed, I used the key that came with the documentation for the PC, rather than the key culled from the computer itself.