My problem is figuring out to combine all my VIA drivers as well as the WinXP PromiseFastTrack SATA 378 ™ IDE Controller, AMD Athlon64 Processor, Marvell Yukon, etc.

I have been ripping my hair out for the last two years with this manufacturer. The last two Recovery disks they sent me will not copy the files when you reboot in order to reinstall windows. None of the three images they gave me was any good. Two of these images had no Promise Driver at all.

I can explore the disk and copy the files needed for a slipstream.

This computer has been shipped 12 times due to the constant mistakes time after time. They have had this computer more than I have had it.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Brenda

The SLP info is hardcoded in the bios, but you need to make sure you use the OEM files and SLP key for it to work.

(1). Backup the slp key that magic jellybean shows and not the one on the sticker.

(2). Choose to show hidden folders and files, create a new folder in the root of drive C and name the folder “OEM” without the quotes and copy these list of files bellow inside the new folder.

Files needed from your Windows “system32″ ;

OEMBIOS.BIN
OEMBIOS.DAT
OEMBIOS.SIG

..and file needed here:

C:\Windows\System32\Catroot\{F750E6C3-38EE-11D1-85E5-00C04FC295EE}

OEMBIOS.CAT

(3) Now, open a command prompt and “CD” your way to the OEM folder and type in these commands one at a time:

MAKECAB OEMBIOS.BIN
MAKECAB OEMBIOS.DAT
MAKECAB OEMBIOS.SIG
MAKECAB OEMBIOS.CAT

This will compress the files to the Windows XP setup format.

Now, copy those four compressed files inside that I386 folder you found on the drive overwriting the old ones to make sure we have the correct OEM files inside the setup.

(4) Look inside the I386 folder for a file called WINNT.SIF ..open it with notepad and see if it has a key that is the same that magic jellybean showed. If so, this step is done.

If there wasnt an WINNT.SIF file there, create a new text file and copy the text below inside of it, save changes, and rename the text file to WINNT.SIF and copy it inside the I386 folder.

Note: Just copy whats between these lines below and not the lines themselves. Replace the “XXXXX: with your slp key jelllybean shows.

————————————————
;SetupMgrTag

[Data]
AutomaticUpdates=1
AutoPartition=0
MsDosInitiated=”0″
UnattendedInstall=”Yes”

[Unattended]
UnattendMode=FullUnattended
OemSkipEula=Yes
OemPreinstall=Yes
UnattendSwitch=”Yes”
Repartition=No
Hibernation=No
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
AutoActivate=Yes
TargetPath=\WINDOWS

[UserData]
ProductKey=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

————————————————-

(5) Now, you will need to slipstream SP2 as this will also create the root cd files needed like:

Home:
WIN51
WIN51IC

Pro:
WIN51
WIN51IP

(6) Burn the cd using a boot image file to make the cd bootable and you should be good to go with an updated SLP restore cd.

I have a two-year-old Packard Bell computer in 2004 which came with XP installed and a COA sticker. It has a hidden recovery partition which will replace the contents of the main hard drive with the original image. I’m pretty sure that this is an SLP-locked version of XP (the Magical Jellybean program reports a product key different from my COA sticker).

What I want to do is to reformat my main partition (actually, repartition the drive so that it’s organized in a way I’ll find more useful). However, I don’t want to restore the Packard Bell image, since that includes a bunch of programs that I just don’t want or need (such as Norton Internet Security 2003!!).

Now, there is a hidden folder C:\Windows\i386 which, as we know, contains all of the files necessary to reinstall Windows. I have seen websites that have a method of burning this to create an installation CD (I also want to slipstream SP2 into it so that I don’t need to do that upgrade later, but if this creates problems I’ll leave that out).

The question is, if I use this copy to reinstall XP, will the SLP lock be maintained? It will be going onto the exact same system as before (I have changed a few things, but not the motherboard or the BIOS). Are there files that, if I save them now and replace them, will keep the lock (such as wpa.dbl)? Should I use the product key from my sticker, or the one that Magical Jellybean reports?

In any case, I’ll be keeping a copy of that Packard Bell restore image safe – if I can’t get a clean install to be activated properly I will just use the image again, and put up with the outdated junk software.

Thanks very much to Ed and anybody else who can offer an answer.

Second friend had some sort of virus/spyware that generally slowed things down, and caused the version information to disappear from IE, though it seemed like it was working okay. Some OS dialogs had buttons that were unclickable. I reinstalled IE. but that killed the OS due to DLL conflicts or something. The recovery disks shipped with the system didn’t match the SLP id. Compaq sent me new cds (for $24) and then were for the wrong computer. They sent me different cds, and those ones worked.

No activation issues per se, but even the Direct OEM SLP solution is a big enough pain for me.

It was mighty strange though!

Far from “deathly silence,” my archives show that we exchanged a series of e-mails on the topic. Here was my next-to-last e-mail to you, sent last November 7:

The links in the e-mail you forwarded are completely generic and go to everyone, regardless of their problem. They explain how to remove SP2, how to get Critical Updates on a CD, how to make a boot disk.

There’s nothing specific to the problem you reported.

I still believe that you are the victim of a misinformed support professional who simply got it wrong. SP2 does not rewrite a system BIOS. The code to do so would operate at a level that would be impossible for Windows to implement.

Rather, I think that the issue is related to a change in a storage driver and its interaction with some BIOS configurations.

I’m continuing to research this with an open mind, but so far I have seen nothing that provides any evidence that my hypothesis is wrong.

Sorry you had what sounds like a serious problem. I still don’t see anything that suggests SP2 destroyed your computer, despite what you think a support person told you.

lol, yep, this is What we run into, I commented in another thread.

If a harddrive needs replaced, or a mobo, or an FDISK due to virus or severe spyware infection, the COA sticker on the side of a dell only works if you call it in. I have never had a problem with phone activation, except for the 10 min of my life I never get back multiplied dozens of times over. I have taught my wife how to do it, so now she is going bald with frustration too. =)

I also ran into an interesting activation problem yesterday. I bought a new copy of XP home 2 days ago. Installed it yesterday and tried to activate. I got the message that my product key (or something) had been activated too many times. There should be no way this could happen on the first install of the OS.

I am not against activation, but tying activation to a specific hardware configuration is rediculous. And if you read microsofts websit on activation, you will realize it does not take much hardware change to require re-activation.

Crazy idea? Assuming it’s Home Edition, you probably paid $25 for that copy of Windows, if you could break out the price that Dell paid Microsoft plus their markup to you. If you had purchased it at retail, it would have been about $100. You got a substantial discount in exchange for accepting the restrictions on your ability to use the software. What makes that crazy?