missing ibm oem cd, others wont activate

[Beemer Biker]

I have a G40 thinkpad with a new hard drive and I cannot find a restore
disk. Maybe there isnt one, maybe I didnt look hard enough. I have a valid
product key.

Obviously (??) I cannot use a Dell, unfortunately, I got a bunch of dell xp
pro cd's.

The company I work for has a corporate license and I tried that disk. It
does not like the IBM Oem key product. It took a long time to get to the
point where I could enter in the key, wish I could have known sooner and I
would not have bothered.

Googleing around I see where in feb 05 microsoft has bios locked xp. Not
exactly sure what that means. I assume IBM was in on the locking and would
think that my product key should match something in the bios for the
notebook. The bios has been upgraded, not sure if that caused the problem.
Since the product key was attached to a cover that was removable, and we
added memory, and we bought 20 at the same time, maybe the key was for
another notebook That is just a murphys best guess, not sure if it
happened.

Surely some version of XP can be activated with the product key. On other
systems I get the opportunity to call in. This one simply says "Type in the
volume product license key below" and then says "The product key you entered
is not valid". There are no other options like calling in.

what to do?


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Beemer Biker (e-mail address removed)
http://TipsForTheComputingImpaired.com
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[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

You need to contact IBM for the CD.
A dell CD or other major OEMs CD will not work since they are locked to the
BIOS.
The change Microsoft made last year does not apply in this case since OEMs
have doing this for a few years.

The various types, Volume License, Retail, OEM etc are different and not
interchangeable.
This is also nothing new.

The only CD that may work is a generic OEM CD.
You key may work with this type of CD.
This is where the change last year comes in.
Since your original CD would have pre-activated, there is no need to input
the key.
But if a generic OEM CD is used, the key is needed.
Microsoft disabled the activation for those keys since Activation is not
necessary when the proper media is used.
The change is also to slow one type of piracy.

Your best fix is to contact IBM unless you want to change/buy another
operating system.

 

[Mario Schmidt]

I have a G40 thinkpad with a new hard drive and I cannot find a restore
disk. Maybe there isnt one, maybe I didnt look hard enough. I have a valid
product key.

Just ask IBM/Lenovo for a recovery disk. They have to provide it for
free because you buyed the licence together with that notebook.

BTW IBM/Lenovo uses a hidden partition on the harddisk for recovery
which can be accessed with the "Access IBM" Button when the Thinkpad
Logo is shown at startup. This hidden partition can only be recovered
with the CD set you get from Lenovo. If you are out of warranty, you may
have to pay for package and shipment.