i have a hard drive from another laptop. the motherboard crashed, so im using
the laptop for spare parts. well the hard drive from it had been set up
already, but when i put it into my current laptop, it says windows needs to
be reactivated. it wont connect to the net, and when i call the automated
number, it says the product ID isnt valid. i have an installation disk for XP
with SP2, but it isnt running when i use the hard drive....any idea how i can
clear the hard drive and reinstall windows to it?

Spike wrote:
You can ignore the activation for up to 30 days. Try setting up your
internet conenction first and then activating it afterwards.

it doesnt give me the option to ignore activation. i can either do it by
phone, do it over the net, or have it remind me later, but when i have it
remind me...it takes me back to login, and when i log in, its the same
situation.

Spike wrote:
Thats bizarre, you should be able to have it remind you later (what I
referred to as ignore) but if you get stuck in a loop then obviously there
is a problem with it.
When you say the "product ID" is not valid, do you mean the 20 digit product
key ?
What make is your old laptop? It is quite possible that your old laptop had
a branded oem version of XP which cannot be transferred to another laptop as
it is locked to the bios. For example if you have a Dell laptop with a bios
locked xp, you cannot transfer the hard drive to a Compaq one. This may
explain why it is coming up as an invalid product key.

the ID was in reference to the long ass grouping of numbers, but i believe
its more than 20, its 9 groups of 6 numbers each i think. and its a hard
drive from an HP, and im trying to put it on a gateway...if i can just clear
the hard drive even, thatd be fine...i just need the space, lol.

Spike wrote:
So your laptop has another drive? how do you manage to connect the two?

On Mon, 1 May 2006 14:10:01 -0700, Spike
<Spike@discussions.microsoft.com> - in a blinding flash of brilliance
- wrote:

did the original HDD/WindowsXP come with the (old) laptop when it was
new? If so, I suspect it is an OEM version of WindowsXP and valid only
for the original laptop.

You may need to buy a new version of XP.
--
steam3801
ASCII a silly question, get a silly ANSI

Spike wrote:

Normally, and assuming a retail license (many factory-installed OEM
installations are BIOS-locked to a specific chipset and therefore *not*
transferable to a new motherboard - check yours before starting), unless
the new motherboard is virtually identical (same chipset, same IDE
controllers, same BIOS version, etc.) to the one on which the WinXP
installation was originally performed, you'll need to perform a repair
(a.k.a. in-place upgrade) installation, at the very least:

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directo...;EN-US;Q315341

Changing a Motherboard or Moving a Hard Drive with WinXP Installed
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

The "why" is quite simple, really, and has nothing to do with
licensing issues, per se; it's a purely technical matter, at this point.
You've pulled the proverbial hardware rug out from under the OS. (If
you don't like -- or get -- the rug analogy, think of it as picking up a
Cape Cod style home and then setting it down onto a Ranch style
foundation. It just isn't going to fit.) WinXP, like Win2K before it,
is not nearly as "promiscuous" as Win9x when it comes to accepting any
old hardware configuration you throw at it. On installation it
"tailors" itself to the specific hardware found. This is one of the
reasons that the entire WinNT/2K/XP OS family is so much more stable
than the Win9x group.

As always when undertaking such a significant change, back up any
important data before starting.

This will also probably require re-activation, unless you have a
Volume Licensed version of WinXP Pro installed. If it's been more than
120 days since you last activated that specific Product Key, you'll most
likely be able to activate via the Internet without problem. If it's
been less, you might have to make a 5 minute phone call.



Simply boot from the WinXP installation CD. You'll be offered the
opportunity to delete, create, and format partitions as part of the
installation process. (You may need to re-arrange the order of boot
devices in the PC's BIOS to boot from the CD.)

HOW TO Install Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default...B;en-us;316941

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm



--

Bruce Chambers

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safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Are you trying to set the cannibalized drive as Slave, and then hooking it
up to the god computer and reformatting it? As Beck says, how are you doing
that in the case of a laptop?

Or are you trying to substitute it for the drive in your good laptop? You
cannot use the Windows on a drive to format that same drive.

Spike wrote: