Using Dell OEM CD on Non-Dell Machine

[minicooper67]

A friend of mine has lost his XP Home CD (he still has his COA/Product Key), and he needs to do a clean install. Would it be possible to do this using my Dell reinstallation CD in combination with his Product Key?

Many Thanks.

 

[DonNagual]

I don't think it'll work. The CD will check for a DELL bios first, and if it doesn't find it, it'll stop the installation.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Burn a new CD with SP2 slipstreamed into it (if that is not on the Dell CD).
You only need the i386 directory from that Dell CD, and that's not Dell-specific.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm

 

[DonNagual]

I think I'll add to my signature something like...

"never believe what I say until RealBlackStuff comes along"

Is there anything you DON'T know how to do? :haha:

 

[minicooper67]

So is it only the i386 folder that I need to copy fom the Dell CD, or do I need any of the root files? Also, when I go to add the image file with ISOBuster, the image file that it finds is called dell.img. Would this cause me a problem? Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[iss]

here is a guide on how to create an XP disk from a recovery disk.

http://www.easydesksoftware.com/recovery.htm#XP

 

[minicooper67]

The re-installation worked!

I couldn't slipstream with SP2, as the Dell disk had already been slipstreamed with SP1a, and as I don't have access to a full-featured burner I wasn't able to create a bootable CD.
I copied the i386 folder from the Dell CD to a blank disk and then booted from a Win 98 floppy to load standard CD drivers. I then partitioned and formatted the HDD as a FAT32 volume and ran winnt.exe from i386 on the CD, allowing the XP setup to do the NTFS conversion. Everything ran fine, and the installation activated with no problems.
Thanks for the input, guys!

 

[patio]

Congratulations.
Probably the smoothest method.
Glad you got it fixed.

patio.