Windows XP

[BoredBloke]

Cherrs for all the comments and especially Netraider who helped by giving me access to an XP ISO image. As luck would have it, one of my XP CD's turned up and I used that in the end. It's going to be copied a million times until my son finds his way onto windows 7. The whole task was made harder by my Action Pack subscription lapsing on the very same weekend and I didn't have a paper copy of the Office key! Although I renewed, the renewal process takes 2 WORKING days to process. Great from a technology company that.

MS has truly cack websites!

[bigbmxdave]

The local IT shop sold me a copy of their disk for £5
as long as you have your own Key I guess most places would be happy to give you a copy.

As other people have pointed out the version does matter but unless you remember paying extra for it you're most likely going to have XP Home

[BoredBloke]

Yes, I assumed he must be using Jaws - the price is a bit of a clue I'm aware of people who have successfully made the transition from Jaws to NVDA, and it doesn't cost anything bar a bit of time to try it out, so I thought I'd mention it.

I will get him to have a look at the one you suggest as I'm picking him up tonight

[NickFitz]

The reader he uses is called Jaws. It's the one his school uses and is supposed to be the best. I think once you have got used to one then its quite hard to change to another. I'll get him to check it out though. His PC is dual booted with Windows 7, so I might stick it on there.

Yes, I assumed he must be using Jaws - the price is a bit of a clue I'm aware of people who have successfully made the transition from Jaws to NVDA, and it doesn't cost anything bar a bit of time to try it out, so I thought I'd mention it.

[BoredBloke]

I know it can be tricky switching to a different AT but it might be worth having a look at NVDA - it's a free open-source screen reader and is now a mature and widely-supported product, and people I know in the field of accessibility speak highly of it. Given that it's free, it can't do any harm to have a try of it on a VM or such

The reader he uses is called Jaws. It's the one his school uses and is supposed to be the best. I think once you have got used to one then its quite hard to change to another. I'll get him to check it out though. His PC is dual booted with Windows 7, so I might stick it on there.

[NickFitz]

I know it can be tricky switching to a different AT but it might be worth having a look at NVDA - it's a free open-source screen reader and is now a mature and widely-supported product, and people I know in the field of accessibility speak highly of it. Given that it's free, it can't do any harm to have a try of it on a VM or such

[BoredBloke]

If you have a technet subscription or know someone who has, XP is still available in various flavours from there. No need to use up the technet keys if you already have one.

Unfortunately I don't. Thanks for the responses. I think he heeds to get an updated screen reader.

As my son is blind he has to use a screen reader. The screen reader itself costs about £800 which is a bit bleedin steep. Like most of the kids at his school he uses a cracked copy on his own PC, which perpetuates the vicious circle. Sw is too expensive which encourages the use of knocked off copies and because so many knocked off copies are floating about the company has to charge more for the sw. The cracked copy he has only works on xp which is why he's stuck with an aging OS and no media to install it with.

We give him the DLA money that is paid to us which means he can easily afford the £800 for the legit screen reader, but he's a bit of a tight @rse and doesn't want to spend the money. I've told him that he needs to pay for the legit screen reader....so he's trying to get a crack for the windows 7 version rather than see his funds drop!!

If you are blind, everything IT seems to be hugely expensive - presumably due to the low economies of scale. We were looking at getting him an embosser - basically a big dot matrix printer that punches out braille. The cheapest of these are about £1500.

[DaveB]

Does anybody know where I can get a copy of XP - just the install media. I have the keys and so I'm not after them. My trusty old XP cd has cracked and stupidly I never made a backup of it. As my son is tied to XP for the short term, I have no real way to reinstall it when it goes wrong. I've tried torrents with little joy! I downloaded 1 copy that would not extract from the compressed file it was saved and and the other was the Italian version...a fact that would have been handy to mention before I started the download.

If you have a technet subscription or know someone who has, XP is still available in various flavours from there. No need to use up the technet keys if you already have one.

[ThomserveBAS]

XP ISO's are particularly difficult to get hold of legitimately as it was only around the Vista-era they started putting them online for all to download - the likes of DigitalRiver make Vista/7 ISO's available for everybody to download, but that doesn't help you I'm afraid.

[Platypus]

My keys were via the microsoft action pack

Ah.... last time I tried to validate one of those, the MS licensing server said "no"

Actually, I just looked, mine were MSDN keys from 2001

[SimonMac]

My keys were via the microsoft action pack

Can't you just download the ISO's from the Microsoft website then?

[BoredBloke]

My keys were via the microsoft action pack

[ThomserveBAS]

There is a tool available that I've used before that tells you what type of key you have, down to which OEM partner (if it's an OEM key) that the key is tied to.

I'll try and dig out the link but it was something like "Windows XP Key Validator" - although Googling that will likely turn up a virus more than anything.

[SimonMac]

Does anybody know where I can get a copy of XP - just the install media. I have the keys and so I'm not after them. My trusty old XP cd has cracked and stupidly I never made a backup of it. As my son is tied to XP for the short term, I have no real way to reinstall it when it goes wrong. I've tried torrents with little joy! I downloaded 1 copy that would not extract from the compressed file it was saved and and the other was the Italian version...a fact that would have been handy to mention before I started the download.

I think the problem will be without knowing what type of key you have (I don't mean Home/Pro, but Retail, Volume Licence etc) the odds of getting a compatible match would be slim.

[BoredBloke]

Does anybody know where I can get a copy of XP - just the install media. I have the keys and so I'm not after them. My trusty old XP cd has cracked and stupidly I never made a backup of it. As my son is tied to XP for the short term, I have no real way to reinstall it when it goes wrong. I've tried torrents with little joy! I downloaded 1 copy that would not extract from the compressed file it was saved and and the other was the Italian version...a fact that would have been handy to mention before I started the download.