Does my new pc have used HD?

[billsahiker]

I just bought (2/19/07) a new custom built pc from a well-established
local shop and it looks like the hard drive was installed over two
years ago based on the XP Pro Event Log which has entries over two
years old. The event log includes things like Windows Hotfix
installed, Windows Service Pack installed, host name of this machine
has been changed from MACHINE to USER, setup successfully installed
Windows build 2600, and so on. The date of these events is over two
years old, so was I given a used HD? Other events suggest it was used
in a web server because all kinds of networking, dcom, gateway events
are logged. The shop told me they buy the components and then build
the machine. I was told they had purchased the components the same day
they built my machine.

I have not called the shop yet because I want to have knowledge on
this beforehand.

Where is the event log file on xp pro so I can save it to a dvd and
also print it?

Bill

 

[Arno Wagner]

I just bought (2/19/07) a new custom built pc from a well-established
local shop and it looks like the hard drive was installed over two
years ago based on the XP Pro Event Log which has entries over two
years old. The event log includes things like Windows Hotfix
installed, Windows Service Pack installed, host name of this machine
has been changed from MACHINE to USER, setup successfully installed
Windows build 2600, and so on. The date of these events is over two
years old, so was I given a used HD? Other events suggest it was used
in a web server because all kinds of networking, dcom, gateway events
are logged. The shop told me they buy the components and then build
the machine. I was told they had purchased the components the same day
they built my machine.

It is possible that they cloned another disk for the installation.
Things to check:

- Whether yoru copy of XP is legitimate (it may be even if cloned)

Microsoft has this "WGA" tool you can use. Also anm original
DVD/CD with serial number is a good indicator.

- The manufacturing date of the HDD

For this you can use a SMART monitoring tool, e.g. the
smartmontools (->google) command smartcl like this

smartctl -i <hdd-devices>

To get the HDD serial number. Then you need to look up this
serial number with the manufacturer. Usually you can get
the remaining warranty time and sometimes the manufacturing
date. The SMART attributes also contain the time the disk
has been actively in use, but I found this information
to be unreliable on some models.

As an alternative, the disk itself has the manufacturing date
printed on its top label.

I have not called the shop yet because I want to have knowledge on
this beforehand.

Where is the event log file on xp pro so I can save it to a dvd and
also print it?

No idea.

Arno

 

[billsahiker]

Thanks. I did not consider imaging. Since They gave me the xp pro disk
and the box the motherboard came in they probably just copied the
image from another machine, but I will check out the smart thing.