OEM CD and Product Key

Neon wrote:

I've been given the task of reinstalling Windows XP Home Edition
on my sister's Dell Dimension 3000 PC. She doesn't have the original
CD that came with the machine. I have a generic OEM Windows XP
Home SP 3 CD. If I use that disk to reinstall the operating system,
will Windows accept the product key displayed on the side of the PC's
case, and will it activate okay? Or do I have to order exact
replacement media from Dell?

I've also downloaded all of the motherboard drivers from Dell's web
site.

Thanks.

Neon

You might back up the disk first (as insurance against making things worse).
I like to be able to say to a relative "it's no worse off than when I
got it" :-)

In this case, I'd use a Linux LiveCD and an external USB
hard drive, and use "dd" to do a sector by sector copy, as that
preserves the entire disk structure (which may be quite convoluted).
This is an example of copying the entire disk (left parameter)
to a single file output (right parameter), where the externaldisk
was formatted in NTFS. This would be my snapshot before doing any work.
It's possible your regular backup software would offer a sector by
sector option as well.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/media/externaldisk/entiredisk.dd

If I was doing it, the very first thing I'd be checking is the
disk partition structure. For evidence of a restore partition.
There may be a function key you press, at BIOS time, to start
a recovery using that partition.

You can use PTEDIT32 to do that, from the currently running system. Or
if the computer is dead, slave the hard drive from the 3000 to another
computer, and view the contents there. Unzip this, run it, and when
you select the disk (if on a multi-disk machine), it should show
you the partition structure. If there is only one partition, then
chances are, some previous repair effort wiped all the good stuff.
In this example "dell-tbl.gif", the "DE" and "DB" aren't standard
designators and are evidence that you can restore the PC without a CD.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/engli...EDIT32.zip

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore...ll-tbl.gif

The partition type fields, like the valid "07", are listed here.
This was never a very good scheme, as is evident in the
duplicates in the table (Solaris and Linux Swap have the same value).
Things like the "DE" and "DB" probably aren't in here.

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

If the disk has been replaced, or wiped by some experiments, then
there may be no restore data to work with, and then the BIOS triggered
feature would not work. The manual for the Dell Dimension 3000
may give details on what key to press. The respondent here is
using <control>-F11 as the two key combo.

http://en.community.dell.com/suppor...67286.aspx

This site has technical details about how some of this works.
This is the best site I've ever found.

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/

If you know none of that is available, then carry on. You're headed
in the right direction. If your install attempt fails, Dell
might no longer sell replacement media, but independent sellers
on the web might have the disc set for sale (as there are companies
that scavenge disc sets from large companies for resale). Many IT
departments re-image computers as soon as they get them, and any CD
sets are just thrown in a box. And those may eventually make their
way to a recycler site for sale.

Paul