137GB and Activation Follies

[Frank Haber]

After an HD failure, I reinstalled XP Pro retail on an Asus P4GE-V mb. The
owner's CD was "2002". The BIOS accepted and autodetected the new 200GB boot
drive. 2002 would not format more than the non-extended LBA limit of 137G.
My own retail Pro CD (merged to SP2) would not accept his key.

Back to his disk. Which now would not accept a Partition Magic 8 format of C:
(less 8MB or so). So I formatted with my SP2 CD, then hit the reset button,
then checked for ntldr, etc., and erased same. Then I booted once more on his
2002 and accepted the third, less-than-confidence-inspiring choice on the now
ever-familiar "the partition is either too full, damaged" screen. The install
seemed to proceed.

1. This seems like quite a steeplechase to put the user through. Why wasn't
his key accepted?

2. What else could I have done?

3. Is the 200G system primary now quite safe to use?

 

[Robert Moir]

After an HD failure, I reinstalled XP Pro retail on an Asus P4GE-V
mb. The owner's CD was "2002". The BIOS accepted and autodetected
the new 200GB boot drive. 2002 would not format more than the
non-extended LBA limit of 137G. My own retail Pro CD (merged to SP2)
would not accept his key.
Back to his disk. Which now would not accept a Partition Magic 8
format of C: (less 8MB or so). So I formatted with my SP2 CD, then
hit the reset button, then checked for ntldr, etc., and erased same. Then
I booted once more on his 2002 and accepted the third,
less-than-confidence-inspiring choice on the now ever-familiar "the
partition is either too full, damaged" screen. The install seemed to
proceed.
1. This seems like quite a steeplechase to put the user through. Why
wasn't his key accepted?

Because your CD / licence and his CS / licence are different SKUs at a
guess.

2. What else could I have done?

Used his CD and slipstreamed it to SP2 perhaps?

3. Is the 200G system primary now quite safe to use?

Not sure, personally I don't trust those kinds of games myself.

--

 

[Frank Haber]

Used his CD and slipstreamed it to SP2 perhaps?

And a mere user is supposed to know to do this? God have mercy.

 

[Admiral Q]

Or take it to a knowledgeable technician who does - a friend, neighbor, or
the PC repair establishment of your choice. Of course with the tools
available now days, "AutoStreamer" makes it a breeze to create a
slipstreamed version of XP SP2 with the owner's original CD.

 

[Guest]

I would always beware of systems with 'forced' >137GB partitions. It may
work fine until the partition gets to be more than half-full, when the LBA
address might 'foldback' resulting in the first few sectors being
over-written. This will trash the contents entirely.

To be certain this will work OK you would need ot engineer a method of
filling the disk to at least the 130GB point with test data.

 

[Frank Haber]

Or take it to a knowledgeable technician who does

A breeze? Perhaps at the cost of labor in Kuala Lumpur.

Might I remind you that this entire nonsensical dance is mandated by
Microsoft's own Activation? A corporate user would never put up with this for
a minute. It's just insulting.

 

[Robert Moir]

A breeze? Perhaps at the cost of labor in Kuala Lumpur.

Might I remind you that this entire nonsensical dance is mandated by
Microsoft's own Activation? A corporate user would never put up with
this for a minute. It's just insulting.

The problem is the disk space issue with the bios.

Activation certainly sucks but that isn't the issue here really is it?

My apologies if my reply earlier wasn't quite what you were looking for - I
didn't realise you wanted a solution that a normal user was supposed to
already know, I thought you were asking for help and that any solution that
worked would be useful.

 

[Frank Haber]

No, no -- I'm pretty positive that the BIOS is fine. It passes Ontrack's
LBA48 tester, and I repeat - SP2 made no complaint, and formatted the full
200. It was the user's CD that half-failed. And I didn't want to take the
time to slipstream the one CD. I've done that now, and will mail same to him.

I do thinks it's worth squawking about these edge cases.

And FWIW, the first symptom of a broken BIOS is usually when ntldr, boot.ini,
etc. get resaved to the end of the disk. No bootee.

The "wrap at 137 thing" is truly scary though.