Pirate XP Pro

[Guest]

Hi, my Mum, god bless her, has fallen prey to a pirate version of XP pro on a
second hand Pc she bought. To cut a long story short, she applied to
microsoft for the valid version and they sent her a new CD and told her to
use the Windows Product Key Update Tool. Mum lives the other end of the
country from me so I can't sort this personally. Can anybody give me
idiot-proof instructions that even I can understand and pass on to Mum.
TIA
J.J.

 

[R. McCarty]

Why not try a Remote Assistance session. If only one of you has a
modem & the other Broadband it can work (just Slow). I do this
for some of my family and it's much easier than trying to describe &
give instructions over the phone. However, the Key update tool is
pretty simple/straightforward and shouldn't present any big issues.

 

[Malke]

Hi, my Mum, god bless her, has fallen prey to a pirate version of XP
pro on a second hand Pc she bought. To cut a long story short, she
applied to microsoft for the valid version and they sent her a new CD
and told her to use the Windows Product Key Update Tool. Mum lives the
other end of the country from me so I can't sort this personally. Can
anybody give me idiot-proof instructions that even I can understand
and pass on to Mum. TIA
J.J.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page for information about the kit your
Mum got:

http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/downloads/faq.aspx

I haven't done this, but apparently you need first to scan with the
Product Key Update Tool and only if it fails do a reinstall of Windows.

Here's the link I got from clicking on the "Contact Us" at the bottom of
the above page:

http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/Default.aspx?ws=genuine

If doing the necessary is going to be too hard for her, have your Mum
take her machine to a professional computer repair shop (not her local
version of BigStoreUSA) because I don't think you're going to be able
to reinstall Windows for her remotely.

Malke

 

[Guest]

Hi Malke and R.McCarty,
just got this back from Mum,

Hi Jim. I have downloaded the product key for the windowsxp software. but it >recommends you Back up all important information. so now I am stuck? it says >there are two ways to install. 1 Clean install or 2 upgrade. I cant upgrade can I? >cause I havent got it... Mumx

Any ideas as to next step?
Once again TIA
J.J.

 

[Guest]

PS..
I should add that Mum's HDD is partitioned and XP pro is on (C while her
data (ie My Documents et al) are on (D. Will that help if a clean install
is requ.?
J.J.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

You can just ignore that message. The product key update tool will just
scan your computer and then it will come up with a window where you can type
the product key and update it. After that you have to restart the computer
and everything should work fine

Regards

Bejoy Vellat

 

[Guest]

Hi Bejoy, she hasn't come back to me yet so I don't know if things are going
OK, I suppose she would phone if it got out of hand and couldn't e-mail me.
Just suppose the PK update tool says that it can't continue and she needs
to use the new CD. Should she (can she) do a repair install over the old
pirate version. I'm trying to get around backing up all the stuff she has on
her data partition.
TIA
J.J.

 

[Malke]

Hi Bejoy, she hasn't come back to me yet so I don't know if things are
going OK, I suppose she would phone if it got out of hand and couldn't
e-mail me.
Just suppose the PK update tool says that it can't continue and she
needs
to use the new CD. Should she (can she) do a repair install over the
old pirate version. I'm trying to get around backing up all the stuff
she has on her data partition.

Although it is always wise to have backups of data in more than one
place (burned to cd/dvd-r's for instance), the data is not on your
Mum's system drive. Doing any type of install of XP should not touch
the data partition.

Here are some links to help you understand installing XP:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm - Repair Install
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install

Malke

 

[Guest]

Thanks Malke,

your input has confirmed what I was hoping, learning by experience can be
expensive, better to ask advice from the experienced. Keep up the good work.
J.J.