[Sussex] Hard disk help/ XP reinstall!

[Derek Harding]

This wisdom was penned by Neil Ford <neil at smudgypixels.net> on Fri, 22
Nov 2002 11:09:36 +0000:

> On 22/11/02 10:54 am, "Derek Harding" <derek at lagham.uklinux.net>
> wrote:
> 
> > Second, I have a friend who has a laptop with XP. He has virtually
> > never used it (it's only 6 months old and he had it as a gift) but
> > now, without any fiddling, it demands the key code from the disk
> > every time it boots and, even though the approriate code is fed in,
> > it simply reboots back to the same demand. Changing to Linux, even a
> > deb distribution :-)> , is not an option. I shall look at it on
> > Tuesday and probably re-install or downgrade to W2k. Anyone any
> > sensible, helpful suggestions before I zap what's on it? There is
> > nothing on there which needs to be kept, so even reformatting is
> > fine.
> 
> It probably needs registering with MS. After a certain time XP
> prevents you from using it until this is done.
> 
> It's a really pain of a process btw, especially if the machine is
> doing the reboot process.
> 
> Re-installing XP will reset the clock and allow the process to be
> completed. That is probably the best bet in this case.
> 
> Regards
> Neil.

Thanks Neil. Am I glad only the wife's machine has W98 and no other smell of MS except through VMWare. It is wonderful to drop out of the BSoD and reboot the VM without a care!

-- 
Best wishes,
Derek