Zwilnik
Member
My Windows/XP Professnal cd is too old and messed up to work. I keep getting a msg to load my XP CD to fix a problem, Windows Explorer no longer works. I am way too broke to buy a new cd, I threw away my old XP cd a year ago when it did not work for something else.
Am I going to have to live with nearly an unworkable pc?
If by saying you are too broke to purchase a new CD, and that you are after instructions on how to get an XP CD for free - this is not the site.
If you had kept your old original XP cd, you might've been able to exchange it for a replacement for a nominal cost. As you have thrown the disk away - that option is now much more difficult.
All I can suggest is find a friend who has the same XP CD as you had - and make a backup copy. Hopefully you didn't throw out your cd-key with the scratched cd.
Failing the above, give Microsoft a phone call - they may be able to supply a replacement if you can provide proof of purchase.
Zwilnik
Member
That's what I thought, I'm up shit creek without a pattle. How do you provide proof of purchase on something over six years old?
I have supported Microsoft since the DOS days. (Multable DOS versions, Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups, 95, 97, ME, XP, XP Pro. I have tossed out two XP Home versions, because the new computer came with XP. Now that I am disabled and poor, I can no longer have a PC. It does not seem fair, but who said life is fair?
Sorry for the rant. It's wierd I just found my ME CD, but it is an upgrade version, so I can't use that, but who would want too?
Windows XP normally comes with a certificate of Authenticity with a hologram sticker on it (even systems with XP preloaded) - and usually (I think) the CD Key printed on it, as well as the number of licenses the certificate is for. I'd be checking through your other manuals and booklets that came with your hardware - I think that certificate might be able to be used as proof of purchase (in the absense of an original CD).
Robert
StrayCat
Hi BuBBy
That's right.He should see the XP key on this sticker!
Next step for him is to follow your previous advice...
I did help someone out earlier this year with a totally crashed computer and no(or lost) recovery cd
Finding this hidden partition-with the recovery image on it-did solve a lot of driver problems (and recovered all of his pre-installed programs).And I was able to retrieve his precious 'documents' with an image program.
Wish you luck Zwilnik !
sukibabe
Games Junkie
OK, now I'm going to look for mine,lol!
Both my Dell's were bought with XP on it. On the Laptop, I believe I asked that the CD be included and they said it wasn't needed?
My 3rd PC (hubbys) is a Compaq. Had XP installed.
What is funny with this post, I just checked the prices for full version XP PRO SP2.
They ran anywhere from about 300(Dell) down to 135(Ebay)bucks.
I guess my question here, is that I heard they were taking XP off the retail market on June 30th this year. Does that also mean it will go the way of ME(no support or upgrades)and should I be worried about getting stuck with Vista when my PC's meet there maker? All 3 comps are under 2 years old.
If the big rush I read about to stock pile copies of XP is true, if one would do this and had to buy a PC with Vista or Windows 7 on it, what would be the sence(I no I'm not making any)of getting these copies if M$ will no longer support it?
Dell is still making some machines with XP, but for how long, till June 30th?
If I can't find the CD's(I have all the paperwork)would Dell be obligated to send me them because they didn't include them?
Suki
copmom
Member
sukibabe.. If I were you, I'd call Dell customer service and request they mail you all of the installation CD's! Let them know you have 3 of their machines! (So you should get at least ONE set). It's not just WinXP, the disks have all the utilities and a lot of other stuff!
I did that and basically told them I wanted those in case I ever had to format my HD. They don't automatically include them when you buy a new machine, but they did send me all of mine. They've got your info. on your service tag#'s, etc. to verify that you actually did buy from them!
sukibabe
Games Junkie
copmom
2 are from Dell, the other one is a cheap compaq tower I bought for my husband from Wal-Mart and gave him my old 17" Dell Ultrasharp Monitor and my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse. Don't want him near the Dell's,lol! I then bought myself a new 19" Ultrasharp Monitor and a wireless backlit keyboard and mouse.
I will check my Dell files and see what came with it(I keep everything,even the boxes don't get thrown out for a year), then will contact Dell for the CD's!
God I hate talking to their customer service, they want to sell you the moon(ie...HD TV's, extended warrenties, a new computer..........)!
Thanks for the info, I really appreciate it!
Suki
Jul
Member
Just to share this.. base on my 'bad experience.. +s' .. don't buy pc/laptop that have build in cd.. :P I have a acer laptop that come with build in so call cd back up. when crash you can't access your laptop at all so a back up cd is more realistic.. sigh so this is not a handy design at all. (sigh again... )
Zwilnik
Member
Thanks for a the advice. It's too bad I can't see anyway to do any of it.
My PC is 5 years old. The place I bought it from no longer exists. I have moved 2 times since I bought it. I have no proof I bought it. If someone would have told me that I would have gone from middle middle class to lower lower class, I would have thought they were crazy.
I used to buy a new PC every 2 years. I gave no thought to saving anything that came with it. I hope someone someone else can learn from this. Just because times are good now, it can change.
sukibabe
Games Junkie
copmom
Just wanted to update you on the situation from Dell!
First <snipped> representative I talked to, named Rocky, said they could not send me the CD's because my WARRANTY was expired and when I asked for a supervisor or someone higher up, he said no one at DELL would help me! I was so peed at this! I have a Dell preferred account and told him I would never(and I have spent allot of money with them) buy from them again! He just kept telling my I had to buy them now, and no one at Dell would send me them! I even offered to pay the postage!
After I got myself out of my state of mind(I wanted to wring his neck and kick him in the U No What), I calmed down a bit and called my son who Majored in Business and now works for Sprint. I guess he's used to bs, lol, was good at it when he was a kid! He recommended to call back and get someone else. If they didn't play ball, he gave me an arson el of stuff to use on them, lol! He has a Dell also(bought in 2003, at that time they included the CD's)!
I did what he said and called back. I got a very nice guy from India Peter(I think I have talked to this guy before, he sounded so familiar)and he understood my request and said he would send the CD's! There was the traditional auto response and then he sent me a personal message(we had talked about the weather and time difference) saying that he enjoyed talking to me(I told him I would call Dell and recommend a raise. One of the things my son told me to do was get the name, employee ID number and the location, also date, time and tell them if I wanted to, that I was recording the conversation), he even tried to mimic my Midwestern slang of Ba By!
Hopefully I will get the cd's!
My son gave me other options to use also! He said that Dell employees were ill trained and they wouldn't even know what I could lay on them,lol, ie...the consumer protection act(said it's bs, but sounds good), the more serious stuff, Better Business Bureau(said Dell is so low in sales, that I would probably get my cd's in a week) and the good old Lawer, just to mention a few!
Well, my Dell rant is over for now, but I don't know if I would buy from them again!????
Suki
sukibabe
Games Junkie
No more jelly and ice cream !!!
As a customer gesture they are sending the Windows CD's!
However, Desktop is 4 download links for Drivers etc..........
Laptop, link for one driver set, that is out of date, but the <snipped> staff don't know I updated those drivers via their site!!!!
Suki
Anonymous
Unregistered
O.K. lets have no more rude words about people that cannot defend themselves.
Some advice, when purchasing software disks, make a backup copy of the disk so not to tarnish the original media.
Sure a few of us do already as we make a slipstreaming, integrating install disk of windows ops.
I have this for xp sp2, then sp3 when it's RTM.
Also for my 64 bit vista HP edition o.e.m.
Some people may argue that copying the media disk is a violation of the copyright holder rules and regulations, however, unless it says not to copy the disk, then make your own personal backup copy.
If it says to ask permission then email the copyright holder for permission, it does work.
If you need help taking the data off the disk and then burning it to a backup disk and making it bootable, then nLite (xp) or vLite (vista) will help you.
JoanRC
Member
Hey, Suki, I have worked in customer service for over 15 years. Don't waste your time threatening the agents. It just gets their back up.
Most large companies are already recording customer service phone calls. The agents know this and it is so stated somehwere in the fine print of your contract or other paperwork.
Every call is logged by the software. The agent codes the type of issue you are having, and codes whatever redress was given, including any personal emails he may have sent. If you need to call back about the same issue, the next agent is required to rely on whatever is in the file, and is not required to believe your version of events if it does not match what is in the file. If he does believe you, he may not necessarily know how to fit your version into the file in conformance with whatever is already in there. You can only hope that the previous agent understood your issue and recorded it correctly. Customers who abuse, threaten, or try to manipulate agents don't understand how that can backfire.
In most of the places I have worked, supervisors do not take calls from customers. Ever. We usually have some kind of mentor that we can call for advice. They sometimes will let us transfer a customer to them. Sometimes they just give generic advice and hang up. We quickly learn that we are really on our own.
I worked at one company that does customer support for a number of big name companies. The training I received, when I did receive any, was not quite as bad as in this article at Salon.com, hhttp://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/02/23/no_support/index.html , but it was just as useless. The instructor ran the information by us too fast for us to absorb and then spent the rest of the time chatting it up with her favourites. The noise level was not conducive to studying. She told us "I am an instructor, not a teacher". We were given open book exams and were told exactly where to find the answers. She got top marks as an instructor because most of us passed with high marks. We were told that we would be able to rely on the information in our knowledge data base and not to worry about what we were told in class. When we hit the floor, we discovered that maybe a quarter of this information was out of date or just plain wrong.
We were told that hanging up on customers was not an option. We were not told what to do when the customer was not satisfied even though we had done all that we were allowed to for him. We were allowed to request that abusive customers use a professional tone; but this piece of advice came through word of mouth from other agents. It was not official policy.
This was a new call centre and the phone exchanges had not been set up properly and many people were either ending up in the wrong department or being hung up on. This went on for a whole month before the company fixed it. This told me that the company really did not care if customers got hung up on.
At the pizza call centre where I work now, I once took a call from a customer who had been hung up on three times because the agents did not know how to process an order for a customer using a gift certificate. So, I placed the order, worked out the discount manually, added a notation to the order indicating what had happened, sent the order -- and then called someone to find out how it should have been done. That all had a negative impact on my call processing time, decreasing any bonus I may have been earning that hour.
Because of the emphasis on call processing time, we have no time to process whatever emotional or psychological reactions we may be experiencing, good or bad. If I have had a particularly good experience, the next caller might be put off by the lingering enthusiasm, interpreting it as undue familiarity. If I have had a bad experience, the caller may be put off by the coldness that results from holding in my pain or anger. In either case, they may become abusive.
I hang up on customers as a last resort. If the customer keeps insisting on a result that does not match the redress made available by the company, I give him three chances to recognize that the conversation has become redundant and is no longer productive. I will not let him waste my time, nor the time of the customers waiting in line for assistance, and I will hang up on him. If he has been polite, I will let him know that the conversation is over. That hang up button is so easy to brush against while reaching for my coffee cup. Some agents just put them on hold and then go for lunch. Sometimes, if the customer is not getting the kind of service they want from our client, I transfer him through to one of the client's competitors.
I don't have the patience displayed by the customer service agent in this youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjSTTb_siCU . Note that the agent is not allowed to give even the simple assistance required here until the customer has given him the verification information.
If the agent is not providing the redress that you want, your best option is to re-read your paperwork or call again and hope to get someone who is more knowledgeable.
@Zwilnik, if you take a look here it will tell you how (re)activate your copy of XP on the _same_ machine with the _same_ hardware after a reinstall or repair.
Now, for the repair:
There is a built in repair called SFC \scannow, initiated by START >RUN >SFC \SCANNOW. It will ask for your WIndows CD, however, there is a work around: Windows keeps a cache of important files at C:\Windows\System32\DLLcache.
You can find the instructions for this procedure here
or: go to NTFS Boot Disk Website and download a boot disk that will give you access to files on an NTFS partition;
or: go to Bart's and download a 'pre-installed environment' system.
For additional tips 'n tricks, try The Elder Geek.
I forgot the simplest explanation of all: try using hair gel (yep .. ordinary hair styling gel) on the cd. Polish from the center, out.
One of my kids taught me this trick, and it's worked on some of my 10-year old data cd's as well as some of the grandkids' well-used X-Box and Play Station cd's (had to use the method twice on a cd that the baby used as a Frisbee, but eventually it DID work long enough for me to make a backup copy).
To be honest, I've tried 'most every disk restoration trick out there, including a $ 50 disk polishing system. The only time hair gel has not worked is with chipped or cracked disks.
absminprof
Member
I guess I am the latest victim of microsoft. After installing yesterdays giveaway (CyberPowerAudioEditingLab) my PC would not boot aftershutdown. Says it misses file hal.dll in system 32 folder. This is the first time this has happened to me in over 8 months of computer usage and about 6 months of visting and installing from GAOTD. I tired to boot from the Windows XP (Home) CD, but I am missing the 25 digit code which I am supposed to have saved. Since it came pre-installed, I am supposed to have "OEM" type of license (whatever that means). I called up microsoft help-line and after getting disconnected thrice,they told me to contact the vendor. The vendor does not know my code. My question is this
1) I activated and registered my windows as genuine. So does Microsfts concerns extend only upto their level of selfish interest in confirming a copy of windows as genuine. Does it not extend to helping lost souls (such as mine) ?
2)Is there no way of knowing my code ?
I have read the previous posts, they either refer to things that I should have done when my PC was healthy or they are too complicated
Anonymous
Unregistered
Well rule one, always backup your system before installing anything.
If you want to find your o.e.m. key get to http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2612 and download that file which will show you your o.e.m. key.
I would suggest you also harass the company that supplied you with your computer for an o.e.m. disk to which you are entitled to.
If you need to do a repair install then you need it.
absminprof
Member
Many thanks for that link. The problem is I have backed-up all my drives including the C drive, I have backed-up the registry. (Many, many thanks for Titan and Doublesafety, both giveaways). But all these sit in an external portable drive. Unfortunately, i did not know enough to create a bootable CD from my C drive or retrieve the product codes by the use of the suggested software
When I switch on my computer
1) it stalls at 'not able to boot because hal-dll is missing from system 32'
2) when I boot from my XP cd it stalls at the product code page
So, how do I get past these two blocks on my computer ?
Incidentally, I had to turn off my "system restore" as it prevented me from backing up my drives to an external portable drive. With "system restore" on, I used to get an I/O error when I tired to back up (I learnt from internet resources that "system restore" creates shadow copies that interferes with the back-up process). Besides it was taking up 1 gb of my C drive, making the virtual memory run low while running certain tasks.
Many thanks for trying to help
Robert
StrayCat
absminprof
1. Insert your Windows XP CD in your CD/DVD drive and reboot.
2. Instead of loading Windows XP, your computer *should boot from the Windows XP CD* and you should see a message to 'Press any key to boot from CD'
3. *Press any key* to allow the computer to boot from the CD.
When you reach the command prompt type:
expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll
press Enter
Note:
"d:\" being the drive letter of the drive that your Windows XP CD is currently in.
"c:\windows" represents the drive and folder that Windows XP is currently installed on.
If you're prompted to overwrite the file, press Y.
Take out the Windows XP CD, type exit and then *press Enter* to restart your PC.
*If a missing or corrupt hal.dll file was your only issue*, Windows XP should now start normally.
absminprof
Member
Thankyou Robert and FranckW. I will definitely try the suggested methods.
Several free resources for lost product keys (and probably more system information than you'll ever need):
Greg Topala's SIW (Freeware, just click 'skip this ad' on the top right corner of entry page);
Robert
StrayCat
absminprof
You probably figured it out,but I forgot to mention one step.
1. Insert your Windows XP CD in your CD/DVD drive and reboot.
2. Instead of loading Windows XP, your computer *should boot from the Windows XP CD* and you should see a message to 'Press any key to boot from CD'
3. *Press any key* to allow the computer to boot from the CD.
When you reach the "welcome to setup screen",press R (second option)to launch the recovery console
You will be asked to enter your admin password.If none:simply press enter
You will get something like this:
c:\windows
When you reach the command prompt type :
expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll
press Enter
Note:
"d:\" being the drive letter of the drive that your Windows XP CD is currently in.
"c:\windows" represents the drive and folder that Windows XP is currently installed on.
If you're prompted to overwrite the file, press Y.
Take out the Windows XP CD, type exit and then *press Enter* to restart your PC.
*If a missing or corrupt hal.dll file was your only issue*, Windows XP should now start normally.
sukibabe
Games Junkie
Not to get picked on or edited for something that was never by no means offensive(like in the main page comments), The Dell issue seems to be solved!
However, No more Jelly and Ice Cream, lmao, I eat neither one! Those were not my Words!!!!
But I will stand up to my belief, I don't Eat Dells!!!!!!!!!!!!
Suki
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