Windows XP Pro OEM and changing your HD

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi all

Just checking really. Last week my 200GB Seagate Barracuda HD refused to write to a region that was critical to the OS. All measures like repairing and OS reinstall attempts have failed with unrecoverable read/write errors. Essentially 12GB just vanished!

I've purchased a new HD, and given that I build my own PCs I have the OEM version of Windows XP Pro. My concern is that I hope that M$ will not moan about licensing because I have changed the HD. Does anyone know what is likely to happen? Am I fretting for no reason?

Cheers!

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

What might happen is that when you go to activate it after the re-install it will tell you its been activated too many times already. If that happens just give MS a ring and say its not an OEM or that all you've done is change the hard drive due to it crashing. They should just give you a new code to use and it will get activated that way.

Its what happened to me last hardware update.

 

If this is *just* a change of harddrive then it may not even query, but just activate.

Even if it does query it you will be given an 0800 number to ring, as twizzle says. Just tell the M$ guy that the HD failed and you get a code to activate the machine.

Harry.

 

Yep, simple as that.

 

should be no problem with MS. I swopped a motherboard with XP home OEM a few weeks ago - they just gave a new code.

As for drive repairs, Spinrite has recovered 2 seperate lots of data for me. Well worth the $89.

 

Did you try a CHKDSK /R ?

That works sometimes

 

Thanks guys. I was bracing myself to fork out for another license. I'll let you know how it goes when my new HD arrives.

Boyce: Cheers, mate. I might invest in that!

Bluerince: Yeah, tried every trick whilst in the recovery console, including chkdsk, fixboot, fixmbr, yada, but gkept getting unrecoverable disk errors. Even an OS repair and clean install refused because of the same.

 

Oh okay! - if you tell us what you have tried, it will help to not make us second guess the situation

 

Something is gravely wrong with my PC. Currently using the backup one at home.

After buying a shiny new HD a similar problem still exists. When attempting an installation I get the error message: oembios.bin cannot be copied, and sometimes after repreated retries it goes to the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL blue screen and the STOP: 0x0000000A blue screen also! Not good.

Have tried all possible things (removing hardware, testing, repeat), but nothing works.

Taking it to the PC Clinic at PC World to see if my motherboard has died.

 

It's my own build for which I purchased a WinXP generic OEM disk.

Been looking over the internet as well recently, and it appears to be either an issue with BIOS updates or bad memory. Hopefully I'll have it sorted soon.

 

I haven't done the bios update I must admit. Will let PC World take it from here now. Losing my marbles a little and still want a fast PC at the end of it all. ;)

 

Welcome to the exciting and sometimes frustrating world of IT, don't worry rest assured we'd all been there at one point in time. It would all work out and you'd become a better troubleshooter on both counts

 

You wouldn't believe how reassuring that is! Cheers, mate.

 

Yeah, it's my own build. PC World will work on any PC if you pay them.

 

I take it back. Been hearing too many horror stories regarding the PC World PC clinic from IT mates. It has even been made clear to me that I know more than they do when it comes to building and repairing PCs, so cancelling the appointment and doing my own investigations.

Thanks guys.

 

Well, did my own investigation and it turn out to be a faulty RAM stick! Glad that bit is over - XP recovered my data from a partial reinstallation as well! Another lesson learned.

Now my problem is with this recovery, XP is misbehaving like installing my graphics card driver and the card not being recognised as installed, and my firewall and anti-virus not loading at startup.

What I need to do now is to do a low-level wipe of the HD to make it appear new/raw at XP installation. Does anybody know of the best way to do this?

 

Just delete the partition during Windows setup and then format it, preferably not a quick format as that doesn't actually check the disk for errors.