Harddrive replacement, install problem.

[Stu247]

One for the experts !!!

A friend has dropped round a PC with a bit of a fault.

Windows will no longer boot, bad sectors on the harddrive.
It runs chkdsk on boot-up but freezes when it gets to a certain point...
It also fails when i run recovery console.

I have new hardrive to install but the problem is there is no Windies XP COA / product key sticker.
The said friend can't find it and has no record of it and don't think it was a shop bought PC.

I have used 'Produkey' and 'jellybean' to retrieve the key from the drive while plugged into a USB caddy and attached to my PC.

I get the error message 'wrong product key' , i have tried both XP and XP pro install disks.

Any ideas how i can get round this without buying a new COA?
Can i make an image of the current windows install and transfer it onto the new harddrive ?(assuming most of the data is readable)

All suggestions welcomed...

Edited by Stu247 on Wednesday 1st November 13:00

[Plotloss]

You should be able to ghost the original drive in its entireity and restore it on the new disk.

Unless you've changed connector standards like going from Parallel ATA to SATA

[Marki]

Plotloss said:

You should be able to ghost the original drive in its entireity and restore it on the new disk.

Unless you've changed connector standards like going from Parallel ATA to SATA

[Plotloss]

My thinking being that if the new disk is Parallel it will be transparent but if its SATA then it will require some sort of driver type affair.

[Stu247]

Plotloss said:

You should be able to ghost the original drive in its entireity and restore it on the new disk.

Unless you've changed connector standards like going from Parallel ATA to SATA

Do i need to purchase Norton Ghost or is there a freeware app that can do it ?

Cheers.

[Plotloss]

New HDDs often come with such utilities...

[Stu247]

Plotloss said:

New HDDs often come with such utilities...

Was not retail boxed so no utilites i'm afraid....

Its a Maxtor, would Max-Blast be what im looking for :-

www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software%20Downloads/All%20Downloads&downloadID=57

[Plotloss]

Not sure myself, never used Maxtor drives...

[aldi]

Keys are different for Retail, OEM and corporate XP CD's, so that's probably your problem there. You need to persue whoever sold you the PC to find out what the game is if theres no COA sticker. If it was a hooky copy it will probably be a well known corporate key, google the key and see if you get any hits...
re. chkdsk freezing, it will sometimes take a good few hours on a disk thats propper fecked. If it is genuinley freezing try plugging it in direct rather than via the USB caddy. Once it's finished a 'thorough' scan (chkdsk /r /f d the disk should be usable again untill more bad sectors appear, and as long as the bad sectors didnt nuke any critical files the system will usually boot again. That said, sods law usually kicks in and it takes out the system registry. (windows/system32/config/*) If thats the case you can sometimes find a copy in /system volume information/restore/blah... If you still can't get it to boot, (usually blue screens/rebooting on startup) try a repair install.

The recovery console version of chkdsk sometimes says that the errors could not be fixed, but if you run it again it usually gets a bit further each time.

Once the systems booting, as plotty says ghost it to a good disk. You have to weigh up how long it will take you to get it booting and ghosted vs. how long for a clean install and copy the data/settings over.

Hope this helps
Neil

Edited by aldi on Wednesday 1st November 15:07

[Stu247]

Cheers for the help guys !!

I'll give it another go tonight...bloody puters...who would have em !