Repairing XP per Langa 11/11/10

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In the Windows Secrets of 11-11-10, Mr. Langa waxed nostalgic about XP. In his column, there was an article about a non-destructive repair for XP. I read through it with much interest inasmuch as it may fix a little crazy that happens with my old Systemax XP Pro during boot-up: sometimes during the boot-up process, the system quits loading. The hardware enumeration occurs then the XP screen with the marching blue bars shows up. About halfway through the load process timewise, the disc activity LED quits blinking and the unit times out, leaving a frozen screen. Hitting the reset button starts the process over and gives me the boot-up options. Selecting the START WINDOWS NORMALLY then brings up the desktop. Another peculiarity is if (at least) either the keyboard or mouse are connected via motherboard-mounted USB connections, the units quits immediately when the XP screen should appear in the boot process. I got around that by PS/2 and/or a plug-in USB card for USB-connected items.
My question now is that in the repair process that Mr. Langa describes, there comes a time to enter the Windows key code. I have available to me the restore disc that came with the Systemax and an OEM XP Pro. May the restore disc provide the repair as described using its key code or should the OEM be used with its unique code? If things really go south, I have images backed up of the C partition for restore via Perfect Image 12.
On still another note, under which heading should I post a query about multi-booting the Systemax with Linux and Windows 7? I was thinking of adding those OSs onto the system for fun as the machine can handle the Windows 7 per the upgrade app that Windows has. I plan to put each onto its own partition on another hard drive (I have 3 in the desktop for just that purpose.) I tried putting Ubuntu on my netbook and wound up having to reinstall the XP so I could get a proper boot menu. I don’t want to have this occur. Thanks.

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I suggest that you use the OEM disc for a repair.Then most likely you will have to reactive the OS because it will be all together a different OS along with the key code.The restore disc that came with your system will wipe out everything & give you a clean install.

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I was afraid of that. This seems to mean I would have to re-install the drivers for the machine and quite probably SP3 inasmuch as the disc that I have is an SP2 version. At least I did download SP3 and burned it to a disc.

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An update: for some odd reason or windows update, the ol’ Systemax one day fired up properly and has been working fine. The power supply crashed on me but a replacement worked nicely. It is still a very zippy system.

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Glad to see things worked out for you.:cool:

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I think you have bad USB on your motherboard. I conclude this because the plug-in USB card works, and PS/2 works. The plug-in USB is the cheapest and easiest way to fix the USB problem. If you have a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, you might want to keep them stashed somewhere handy, in case USB stops working alltogether, but my guess is that only the USB on the motherboard will be an issue.

As far as getting the correct activation code, run a program called Magical Jelly Bean. It will give you the code for your Windows install, as well as for MS Office (if that is also installed).

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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