Hello and thank you for taking the time to read my post.
I have been trying to build a computer for a friend and have several reclaimed drives available.
I plonk one in and see if it works and sometimes they boot straight up into windows, some XP some Win SE, so on. They are really old.
So I'm wondering if I can find out if the genuine key is actually on the drive? If so where can I find it and can I set up some way to restore the drive if it ever crashes?
They all have a good chance of being genuine.. but I have no CD for them.( OE CD to instal )
I have one drive, a Maxtor 120 Gig that has XP, but on boot up it comes up with this Operating System did not pass as genuine. You may be a victim of counterfeit software.
It all works fine, except the background screen always changes back to black, even though I change it to different wallpapers and background themes.
I'm thinking I might just format that one and reload a new O/S on it or use it as a slave. Sounds like too much trouble to ring Microsoft and go through any verifications only to be told that it is counterfeit and I have to buy a new O/S CD. Its a good size and it works ok, but I dont want to give away a large drive like that anyway when a 60 gig would be more than adequate for her schoolwork.
Oh yeah, and why dont some drives with Operating systems on them start up when I plonk them into a case? Some come up with "boot disk failure insert CD and.." so on.
Another thing I would like to find out is.., if a drive has an original legal copy of say Office on it, can I take it off of that drive and put it on another drive in a working machine?
Many thanks for your feedback. ImnoGuru.
