Can you re-install XP on your desktop from a retail full install disk using your OEM install key?

Answer 1

Sorry if I'm doing this incorrectly, but I've never been here before. I've not yet tried any of this because I've not yet gotten it all straight in my head; partly due to conflicting info on the net. Here goes... Short Answer: No. Long Answer: You can make a new OEM CD from a retail one. An "OEM" install is a bit of a misnomer. An OEM can do a normal, full retail install though it is unlikely. For the purposes of what I'm typing, a retail install gets activated, while an OEM one is "locked" to the BIOS chip and doesn't need to be. (yes, this means you can move to another computer as long as it will accept your BIOS chip) First, be sure you HAVE an "OEM" install. Search your drive for wpa.dbl. If your installation was activated, you should find the file is much larger than 2K (I believe I read 12K somewhere). If it's locked, then the file is never used so it remains at about 2K (1158 bytes on this system). It should be in Windows\System32. (note that you can retain activation for a normal reinstall by backing up and re-inserting this file) How it works: XP looks for wpa.dbl. If it's "active" it tries to match your hardware to it. If it's not, it looks for the "lock files" and tries to match them to the chip. If both fail, you need to activate Windows. Now for the nasty parts: 1. Extract the contents of the CD to a folder on your hard drive somewhere. Get a utility such as ISOBuster to grab the boot loader. 2. Might as well go ahead and slipstream in any service packs or updates you're missing (instructions everywhere). 3. Locate the three oembios.* files on your computer. Unfortunately, I actually have four (dat, sig, bin, cat). I could be remembering wrong, but I'd have sworn it was three. These files will need to go in a particular folder structure in the folder with the CD's files. This is part of where I started getting lost since different folder names kept getting used everywhere I looked. The folders' names will resemble env. variables in that System32 is something like $system$, Windows is $windows$, etc. Seems that $windows$ can be abbreviated $$ but, like I said, I started getting lost. I understood enough to know that the structure basically "maps" to the real structure so the files just get copied. 4. There's a few ways to tell Windows to use the files but it seems that all of them require you to give up control over installation options by telling setup to work in "unattended" mode. I remember "answers.txt" and it seems an inf file is an option. Essentially, it's a file that you tell setup to get all it's answers from instead of asking the user. 5. Get your REAL product key. The one on the tower is apparently not it. It's in the registry. Go to "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion". It's not in the value named ProductID though that looks like one, it's in DigitalProductID. But it's encrypted. But..! It matched ProductID pefectly on this system when I first got it. After a system restore, it's not a match anymore. It's a binary value that, if opened, matches ProductID after all with extra stuff on both ends. A program named "Jellybean" something-or-other is recommended everywhere to get the real key. And that matched none of the others. The key will go in the file from the previous step. 5a. You may not even need your key. Go to www.microsoft.com and you can find that they've provided generic keys for several OSes. Why? Well, it never gets activated anyway and it has to have the custom chip and oembios files so why not? 6. Burn your CD. But be careful! You need a disc-burning program that allows for the more advanced options (Nero is the one most often recommended) due to the way the bootloader works. Alternatively, XP comes with CDImage (mine didn't, but "they" imply it does) which can create an iso that most burning software can use easily. Or search for CDImageGUI and find that someone made a GUI that assembles the command-line for the rest of us (CDImage is a console-app); it comes with CDImage and the bootloader so it's fairly easy to use. Back up everything! Cloning the drive, or simply using a different drive, is a very good idea. Cross your fingers, say some prayers and reboot. I would absolutely LOVE it if people could fix this up. This is what I've gathered from reading the tutorials from dozens of people who've done it minus most of the conflicting info. I'd like to try this but I'm just not comfortable with what I've found so far. I hope this helps someone...