Ok, I've got a computer here in my office. It's running Windows XP Home on a SATA drive.
The computer apparently got infected by a virus and now absolutely will not boot:
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen... Blah blah blah (Check for viruses, remove anything new, etc. etc. etc.)...
Technical information:
STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF7986528,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)
This happens in both safe and normal mode.
At this point, he's not worried about recovering any of the files from the hard drive (kept regular backups). Just wants a wipe and reinstall.
This is a legitimate version of Windows (I know, I built the computer a year ago and sold him the disc). Unfortunately, he seems to have misplaced the case with the license key, but he does still have the disc. Seeing as I can't get into Windows to retrieve the key, any ideas how I might get this thing working enough to get the key off?
(By the way, I did try a repair install, which didn't work. Still gets the stop error.)
-=EDIT=-
Nevermind. He found his license. Problem solved.
