OEM XP and ex NHS Dell PCs

[VectraMan]

My Dad went and bought an ex NHS Dell PC off ebay. I wish he'd asked me first as I'd told him okay, but make sure you get a Windows disk with it. But no, I'm just expected to sort out the mess by phone.

Windows has gone tits up on it, which sounds like it may well be the hard disk failing. But for now he's just trying to reinstall.

All he has is an XP Home CD that came with another PC, presumably an OEM one as when installing from that on the Dell it won't accept the code on the CD.

The Dell PC originally had XP Pro, and has a code stuck to it (which doesn't work with the XP Home CD either).

I have both a retail XP CD and a Dell XP SP2 OEM one. So the question is are either likely to work with the code attached to this PC? Are all Dell OEM CDs created equal? As this was the NHS, I imagine it was a corporate licence?

Any suggestions (other than buy a Mac) welcome.

[Spacecadet]

Has he phoned Dell to see if they'll sell him a replacement disk?

[TheFaQQer]

There is a Microsoft tool for changing the licence key once it is installed.

I had the same problem - my XP CD wouldn't accept the licence key that was on the label (CD did not come with the computer, it was borrowed from a friend, but was SP2 rather than the original version that I had).

In the end, I got a licence key off the net (I know I shouldn't!) just to get it installed. As soon as it was installed, and before it was registered, I ran the MS tool and changed the licence key to the one on the sticker on the PC.

[northernladuk]

My Dad went and bought an ex NHS Dell PC off ebay

Why not just sell confidential information on 1.7 milllion people that is probably left on the hard drive somewhere to the Nigerians/Russians, make a bit more selling the story to the papers and then buy a brand new one?

[VectraMan]

Looking at the Dell forums suggests getting a disk out of them is harder than an extremely hard thing, and that's if you are the original owner.

At the moment he can't get the OS installed to change the code. And I think the OEM CD he has is tied to the BIOS string of whatever machine it came with, so it's not a matter of finding a code.

I had similar issues recently when I tried to clone an existing Dell machine into a VM, and it refused to work with any of the OEM codes or disks I had at my disposal.

[PRC1964]

We bought a few Dells from a company that went under. They all had the licence key on the side and that key worked fine with a Dell OEM XP disk I had.

They didn't work with the Action Pack XP disk though.

[Fred Bloggs]

Reformat it and put Ubuntu on it.

[TheFaQQer]

Looking at the Dell forums suggests getting a disk out of them is harder than an extremely hard thing, and that's if you are the original owner.

At the moment he can't get the OS installed to change the code. And I think the OEM CD he has is tied to the BIOS string of whatever machine it came with, so it's not a matter of finding a code.

I had similar issues recently when I tried to clone an existing Dell machine into a VM, and it refused to work with any of the OEM codes or disks I had at my disposal.

I would use your XP Pro CD with any code that works, then use the key changer that MS produced to change the code to the one on the sticker on the box.

[vetran]

Dell OEM cd is locked to Dells only (like HP, IBM etc) and sometimes to ranges of models normally Corporate against home.

Another corp cd should work. What model is it?

[Sysman]

Whenever I've seen ex-corporate PCs up for sale they have deliberately wiped all software to keep the right side of licensing issues.