I bought a new laptop and wanted to do a restore/format on my old laptop.

I popped in the windows xp disk that came with the laptop and reinstalled windows. then i reinstalled original applications. i get an "activation" window that pops up and wants me to enter the windows product key. i have 29 days to do so. When I enter the product key, it says it is invalid.
I did a search on microsoft's webpage and it says this happens when a second OS is installed on another partition.

I checked my hard drive space, and sure enough, this is what happened. instead of REPLACING the other OS and deleting all the old files, it just installed it on another part of the harddrive. So the old OS and files are still on the hard drive, i just can't access them.

my question is, how do i start from scratch and just install it like it was when i bought the computer. Thanks

2/19/2007 7:39:24 PM

put the cd in and reboot (do not follow the reinstall prompt that comes up in Windows). near the beginning of the boot process it should say "press any key to boot from cd." press a key. if this prompt doesn't come up, you will have to edit your BIOS settings to enable boot from CD-ROM, then try again

[Edited on February 19, 2007 at 7:51 PM. Reason : ,]

2/19/2007 7:50:48 PM

^
What he said, and the other issue at hand ... the CD-Key that gets put on your system when you do a reinstall from the CD may not be the correct one. The correct one *should* be on the side of your case, or came with your computer documentation. Google "Change Windows XP key" for how to correct it.

2/19/2007 8:09:15 PM

the one i put in is the one on the bottom of the laptop.

i booted from the CD and deleted the partitions and am formatting currently. i'll let you know if it works.

2/19/2007 8:15:46 PM

should be smooth sailing from there as long as you've got the drivers for the hardware in your laptop. if not just download them from the laptop manufacturer's website.

2/20/2007 1:24:22 PM