Hi all, as promised, after scores of wasted cds... I finally got my retail XP Pro toaccept the sticker s/n under the laptop:-
Note: I do not believe to be doing anything against the rules. I will assume that everyone here has a legit copy of the licence sticker under their laptop.
On top of this, I will assume that the XP CD is legit but as far as I know, this is not needed as you have a legit licence.
We are editing the CD to ensure it accepts the legit licence.
When I bought my Sony SZ2XP/C, I could not believe how much junk there was pre-installed by Sony. 8 GBs of trial software and unstable Windows files made the laptop useless on Day 1. I’m very specific on how things are setup, from where things install, to what is installed and so on.
Having said all this, I was not surprised to see anything because of previous users complaining about this.
So I thought, what I will do is use my legit copy of Windows XP Pro and install it on the laptop. There was an initial issue with drivers because many on the forums mentioned how difficult it was to get drivers for Sony Laptops. This was not an issue for me because the drivers were all available including the camera and shortcut keys on the website. Failing the website, the drivers were available on the c:\ along with the applications (such as Sony Vaio power management and so on).
I would strongly advise copying this although most will be on the website.
So after installing… I noticed that the serial number under my laptop was invalid. Now, I had just bought this laptop, got it with XP Pro which I assume I paid for during the buying of the laptop. When this did not work, I was rather annoyed. I phoned Sony up and they were not interested. When I used a serial that worked, and then changed to the sticker, it failed. Microsoft too did not want to know.
So that’s my story on how things got started.
After 20-30 copies of XP Pro, I found the way to have a clean install and make it work.
Note:
Microsoft XP Pro Retail, OEM, Corp, and restore CDs will not accept the sticker serial number
1.Find a copy of Windows XP Pro, or OEM
2.Copy the entire contents making sure hidden files or folders are copied to hard-disk. To do this, make a folder called XP in your C:\
3.Once copied, you need several files in your I386 folder from the Sony install. Now these are almost impossible to get if the hard-disk is corrupt, formatted or not accessible. The files are as follows:-
•OEMBIOS.BI_
•OEMBIOS.CA_
•OEMBIOS.DA_
•OEMBIOS.SI_
•OEMCOA.JP_
•OEMIG50.EX_
•OEMIGLIB.DL_
•OEMLOGO.GI_
•PIDGEN.DLL
•SETUPP.INI
4.Copy the above files into your i386 folder in the XP you copied to your HD
5.Now you are ready to burn the files to CD but first, you need to ensure the CD is bootable
6.To make the CD bootable…. Create a new Bootable ISO in Nero
7.Copy all the files and folders in your XP folder into your ISO image in Nero
8.The folders you should have in your image are:-
CMPNENTS
DOCS
I386
SUPPORT
VALUEADD
Autorun.inf
readme.htm
setup.exe
setupxp.htm
win51
win51ip
win51ip.sp2
9.Click on Burn.
10.On the Boot tab, ensure Kind of Emulation is set to None, and number of Loaded Sectors is 4 (or cd will notboot!!)
11.Now we just need a bootable image. This is attached in the files. You can extract the bootable image from your original XP CD using ISOBuster
12.Select Image File and use the Microsoft Windows.IMG in there
13.That’s it… hit burn
Boot of the new CD you just created and once asked for serial, use the serial number from under the laptop. This should successfully accept your serial number and activate.
That’s it from me…. Have fun in your CLEAN windows installed laptop/PC.
I accept no responsibility in this however can say that in several installations, this has worked fine. This will work on other laptops with similar issues such as HP and Dell.
Thats it... I just need to find a place to host these files.. any advice? Its about 13mb for anyone who wants them.
