I have an old Dell computer which has not been used for a year. At startup
about 60 safety upgrades was downloaded. After this I accepted the
installation of SP2. After this installation the coputer started but newer
fully started Win XP, instead it restarted the computer. This continued
without end. The computer was delivered with Win 98 and when Win XP came out
I bought a Win XP family upgrade. Since the computer did no longer start I
finally decided to reinstall XP from the CD, which seemed to go well until it
asked for the product key. We live abroad but I have now been searching our
summer home for two weeks without finding this code. It should be on the back
of a sleeve, which no longer seems to exist. The disk is stored in a hard
case for safety. Is there any solution to this? I went to a store and tried
to buy a new XP but they said that it is not sold any longer and the computer
can not run Vista.
I would be very grateful for any help in this case.
If the drive was not formated you can retrieve the key from the
registry. If the drive was formated you are out of luck, unless you
want to try to use recovery utilities to undo the format so that you can
then retrieve the information from the registry file.
John
Ebbe wrote:
> I have an old Dell computer which has not been used for a year. At startup
> about 60 safety upgrades was downloaded. After this I accepted the
> installation of SP2. After this installation the coputer started but newer
> fully started Win XP, instead it restarted the computer. This continued
> without end. The computer was delivered with Win 98 and when Win XP came out
> I bought a Win XP family upgrade. Since the computer did no longer start I
> finally decided to reinstall XP from the CD, which seemed to go well until it
> asked for the product key. We live abroad but I have now been searching our
> summer home for two weeks without finding this code. It should be on the back
> of a sleeve, which no longer seems to exist. The disk is stored in a hard
> case for safety. Is there any solution to this? I went to a store and tried
> to buy a new XP but they said that it is not sold any longer and the computer
> can not run Vista.
> I would be very grateful for any help in this case.
In news:084F8D60-D78B-4EEB-B0BA-1D3AB815065A@microsoft.com,
Ebbe <Ebbe@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> I have an old Dell computer which has not been used for a
> year. At startup
> about 60 safety upgrades was downloaded. After this I
> accepted the
> installation of SP2. After this installation the coputer
> started but newer
> fully started Win XP, instead it restarted the computer. This
> continued
> without end. The computer was delivered with Win 98 and when
> Win XP came out
> I bought a Win XP family upgrade. Since the computer did no
> longer start I
> finally decided to reinstall XP from the CD, which seemed to
> go well until it
> asked for the product key. We live abroad but I have now been
> searching our
> summer home for two weeks without finding this code. It
> should be on the back
> of a sleeve, which no longer seems to exist. The disk is
> stored in a hard
> case for safety. Is there any solution to this? I went to a
> store and tried
> to buy a new XP but they said that it is not sold any longer
> and the computer
> can not run Vista.
> I would be very grateful for any help in this case.
The key for an XP Upgrade CD would have been on an orange
sticker inside a tri-fold binder with a green cover if XP Home
Edition and a blue cover if XP Professional.
It's a long shot but you might want to contact Microsoft to see
if they can help.
>I have an old Dell computer which has not been used for a year. At startup
>about 60 safety upgrades was downloaded. After this I accepted the
>installation of SP2. After this installation the coputer started but newer
>fully started Win XP, instead it restarted the computer. This continued
>without end. The computer was delivered with Win 98 and when Win XP came out
>I bought a Win XP family upgrade. Since the computer did no longer start I
>finally decided to reinstall XP from the CD, which seemed to go well until it
>asked for the product key. We live abroad but I have now been searching our
>summer home for two weeks without finding this code. It should be on the back
>of a sleeve, which no longer seems to exist. The disk is stored in a hard
>case for safety. Is there any solution to this? I went to a store and tried
>to buy a new XP but they said that it is not sold any longer and the computer
>can not run Vista.
>I would be very grateful for any help in this case.
You will need to remove the hard drive from the Dell computer and
install it as a second hard drive in another machine.
Product key recovery where disk is not bootable but is still readable: http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/...-key-recovery/
XP product key 
Linear Mode
