Vigilante
Posts: 1,634 +0
Hi all.
I'm hoping somebody already has this procedure they can share with me.
I have a Compaq 6000 with XP Home on it, a customer apparently did some kind of reload which wiped out the Compaq recovery partition. The install is clean but there are traces of old programs through the file system and registry though the programs don't work and have no uninstall info. So I want to do a clean install.
The problem is, I don't have the Recovery Partition, and I don't have Compaq XP restore CDs. I want to reload this with a normal XP Home CD, it's all I've got. However, I don't want to have to fight with activating keycodes, OEM info and all that because it's a Compaq key.
So while the system is still working, I want to backup all the info relating to product key and activation and any Compaq OEM files that are needed, so I don't have to call MS or any garbage like that.
I know you can back up wpa.dbl and wpa.bak, but is that it? Has anybody done that before? Will the Compaq XP product key work if I use a regular XP Home CD? If not, how can I reload it? Can I use a regular product key and then just change it to the Compaq one after reload?
All suggestions welcome,
thanks!
I'm hoping somebody already has this procedure they can share with me.
I have a Compaq 6000 with XP Home on it, a customer apparently did some kind of reload which wiped out the Compaq recovery partition. The install is clean but there are traces of old programs through the file system and registry though the programs don't work and have no uninstall info. So I want to do a clean install.
The problem is, I don't have the Recovery Partition, and I don't have Compaq XP restore CDs. I want to reload this with a normal XP Home CD, it's all I've got. However, I don't want to have to fight with activating keycodes, OEM info and all that because it's a Compaq key.
So while the system is still working, I want to backup all the info relating to product key and activation and any Compaq OEM files that are needed, so I don't have to call MS or any garbage like that.
I know you can back up wpa.dbl and wpa.bak, but is that it? Has anybody done that before? Will the Compaq XP product key work if I use a regular XP Home CD? If not, how can I reload it? Can I use a regular product key and then just change it to the Compaq one after reload?
All suggestions welcome,
thanks!