Windoze lock out? Linux entry tool?

[johnpalmer]

Hi

I'd like to start by giving you all a full apology for yet another xp user whining about xp activation and having such a large thread... I have got myself in a true pickle and pray and hope someone here will point me to the right resource!

I sold a PC recently with win XP installed, the PC had 2 Hard drives, (Primary and Slave) I pulled the slave off of it as it had all my films, music and files on it (About 35GB worth). Now here's the dilemma I tried to use my pal's win98 PC to get access to it but the 1st hurdle is it's set to NTFS and win98 can only read FAT32. 2nd hurdle is that as I pulled the Slave drive so my install of xp was not on it. I installed windows xp home expecting this to immediately resolve the issue, but to my horror it locked me out of the hard drive and asked me to activate windows. In an act of desperation I "borrowed" a copy of xp pro from work and installed that too expecting it to solve my access problem. (As Pro needs no activation)

During the install I got a prompt saying, c:/windows has a current version of windows installed; will you install over this version or choose a new directory? I panicked again thinking that if I installed over the other install I will certainly lose my stuff (I think as doesn't it format the partition too?). So I installed PRO to c:/windows/pro. To a curtain extent it worked BUT I can only access files within the program files directory. I can't find anyway into the hard drive other than this tiny directory xp has given me access to called f: program files. Whereas I thought I'd be able to navigate all the way through the HD to my files and network it with my laptop (which has the cd-rw) and burn them all off.

But Woe is ME!!!

I can

[Xeen]

1. You obviously did something wrong because an unactivated version of Windows does not lock you out for 2 weeks. THe old install shouldn't affect the time, because when you reinstall Windows it should reset the activation date.

2. Installing 2 sets of any Windows of the same partition is moronic if you intend to have both work. So of course the old install wont work anymore since the new one overwrites directories.

3. Try to attach the hard drive to a computer with Windows NT, 2000, or XP already installed. That will read the NTFS.

4. XP Pro **DOES** require activation. XP Corporate is the one that doesn't.

5. Try looking for the crack for Windows XP activation.

6. As far as I remember, the activation problem doesn't affect Windows safe mode. Try launching Safe Mode with Networking and see if you can transfer the files that way.

As for Linux, it should read NTFS fine and let you copy the stuff, but I dont know if you can find a small enough distro to download fast on a 56K. Maybe you can download a bigger one elsewhere?

[ January 31, 2004: Message edited by: xeen ]

[WMD]

quote:So I installed PRO to c:/windows/pro.

Bingo.  That's the problem right there.

You installed Pro inside of Home.  

Either way, why the hell did XP Pro lock you out for adding a hard drive?!?  :eek:

[WMD]

Oh btw I forgot - you can get muLinux, which comes on floppies and has an NTFS read-only driver.  

http://mulinux.sunsite.dk/