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Quick question on restoring a HP brand PC

R

randym431

Golden Member
Lucky me! I am recovering my bro-in-laws HP pc. He got it at walmart last Christmas and it has tons of viruses now and unusable.
I "could" make the restore disc's and recover back to "out of the box", but in these cases (of viruses) I usually format and reinstall xp and also any programs. That is the way I like to do it. And I know this HP pc came with a lot of trialware that has expired and other HP junk they like to add in.

ANyway, the xp code key is on the side of his HP pc. Can I just install my own copy of home XP, and use his code to activate? Thus just installing the few things he really uses and needs after the fresh xp install. What I dont know is if the xp key code will work if my copy of XP is actually installed but his key used to activate.
(In short, can I install my xp and use his key code to activate?)

That would also make it much easier to then create a recovery backup using the GHOST program afterwards that he could use for future recoveries ( that I'm sure he will have to do).

ps. If I could see a way to just reinstall his xp and bypass the other HP junk, I would. But I dont think you can do that with these HP pc's and their restore disc's.
 
I believe if you hold down the f10 key as soon as the machine boots it will lauch you into the recovery partition. Once there you should have 2 options , A destructive recovery which formats and installs to the original configuration and a Non-Destructive Recovery which installs the System files and applications while preserving your data and apps.

Good Luck
 
Thats the choices, but I wanted to just install xp clean and not the other hp junk.
I dont see an option in the hp restore to only reinstall xp. You must also reinstall all the hp orig software and the trialware junk (like AOL).
 
As long as your CD is an OEM CD, you can install it, using his key code, then activate it via phone call (slight chance youll be able to activate over the net, but you can try)

If you need an ISO of XP Home OEM, lemme know
 
You will have to activate it by phone, MS changed their activation scheme to where any time a OEM key from a major vendor was used with a vanilla OEM disk it had to be called in and manually confirmed. But yes, as long as you have an OEM disk of whatever copy of XP the key is for, it will work.
 
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