XP total-rebuild option

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Kept a hard copy of Fred Langa’s 2006 article “XP’s No-Format, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option”. Just so happens that now a friend of mine wants help with his older laptop that runs XP. Sounds like Fred’s rebuild idea would be perfect for this machine. He wants to keep it as a “spare” & has been having some issues with it. One question I have. He’s pretty sure XP was pre-loaded on this Toshiba machine, if there was a separate partition with a copy of XP on it, it is not there now. I have a cd of XP from one of my previously built machines. Can I use that to do the repair build? If so, which product ID # would I use, the one that is on his machine now or the one that is on my XP cd?

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If both CDs are the same version of XP, probably Home Premium, and you are doing the non-destructive rebuild, then I think you can.

If you were doing a clean install, then the OEM Product Key wouldn’t work with the Retail CD (or with an OEM XP CD from another manufacturer, or in the case of HP even from a different model).

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For folks who don’t have it / can’t find it, Fred’s original article is here:
http://www.informationweek.com/software/operating-systems/langa-letter-xps-no-reformat-nondestructive-total-rebuild-option/d/d-id/1044226

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You need xp with #2sp to work on the roll over to W7

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The 6 year computer which I performed CPR on, still had the CD’s that came with it & the key code, with SP 2 in it, and it installed. Then I did a fresh install using W 7, Home premium, and a new key code. it took took no time to install. What took the time was in stalling 150+ updates. P.S. Jelly Bean will give u a key code.

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Something you may encounter is the install disk you are using for repair needs to be fairly close with the MS updates or it it will fault. That’s how I learned about slipstreaming years ago. You use Nlite and update packs I don’t see any of the old places that kept up with the new releases from MS.
Joe

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Something you may encounter is the install disk you are using for repair needs to be fairly close with the MS updates or it it will fault. That’s how I learned about slipstreaming years ago. You use Nlite and update packs I don’t see any of the old places that kept up with the new releases from MS.
Joe

Click

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It took a while to find this but if you do not want the hassle of reactivation for XP there are 2 files you copy before the install. Go to the C:WindowsSystem32 then copy “wpa.dbl” and “wpa.bak” and save for after install. After new install go in safe mode and copy them to C:WindowsSystem32 I just renamed the 2 existing files. It will not work if the hardware is significantly different from that in place when the Windows Product Activation database files were created.
Joe

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It took a while to find this but if you do not want the hassle of reactivation for XP there are 2 files you copy before the install. Go to the C:WindowsSystem32 then copy “wpa.dbl” and “wpa.bak” and save for after install. After new install go in safe mode and copy them to C:WindowsSystem32 I just renamed the 2 existing files. It will not work if the hardware is significantly different from that in place when the Windows Product Activation database files were created.
Joe

A very useful piece of information. I wish I knew this 15 years ago.

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