Windows Repair Issue

[Lone99star]

I have an HP DV5 that the customer tried to do a repair install from cd.
He got an error somewhere in the process but he dosn't remember what the error was.
On boot it shows the "This copy of windows must be activated before you can login, would you like to activate now...etc"
Of course if I click no it will reboot or show me the users login screen.
If I click yes it goes to a blank desktop, active mouse but unable to start TM.
Safe mode is no good because you can't activate in SM.

I am about to slave and image the drive.
Any advice on recovery would be appriciated.

Lone99star

 

[Computerpete]

Was the repair cd a vista or 7 also was your client trying repair or reinstall windows.

 

[xxsilk109xx]

I have seen this before, when I tried to install a copy of windows onto the computer. Just start from scratch and you will be fine. Apparently he installed it just fine but never activated it, so it came to that screen after X amount of time. There is really no need to image the drive, because he has already formatted it (unless he has docs that he needs).

If you need docs, slave the drive and back up data, then just start from scratch installing the OS...activate when you get internet active and you will be fine.

 

[Lone99star]

XP sp3, the customer said he was having print spooler issues and was told by someone on an end user site that he should do a repair using his original system cd.
I was able to image the drive so the data is safe.

 

[Ccomp5950]

Before I start: Safemode won't work now, but you CAN use Safemode with Command prompt which is part of how we are going to fix this up.

The problem is The windows repair changes some of the Internet Explorer system files into IE6 but not all. So if you had IE8 or IE7 on there you will experience this.

What is happening: Msoobe (microsoft out of the box experience) is starting up and requiring you to register because the date in the registry is from when the computer was originally registered. But the Registration doesn't match the system anymore so it's saying "You had 30 days to register, you didn't now register or we won't let you in". The problem is MSOOBE requires Internet explorer to work for it to display the window properly. Because IE isn't working, you can't register and instead are stuck in a loop.

How to fix:
Pop your XP CD in again, and run the repair console. We are going to uninstall IE7/8 manually using the batch files Microsoft provides (with .txt extensions for some reason)

Select the windows installation (you will have to type the number 1 most likely and hit enter)

For IE8...

At the dos prompt that shows up type

cd ie8\spuninst

This will change your directory to C:\Windows\ie8\spuninst\ if you had IE8 installed, if not skip to IE7 step below...

then type

batch spuninst.txt

then

type cd ..\..\

to put us back at C:\windows\

For IE7...

At the dos prompt that shows up type

cd ie7\spuninst

This will change your directory to C:\Windows\ie7\spuninst\

then type

batch spuninst.txt

You've now removed IE7/8 manually, reboot your computer it should work after that.

If you've removed IE7/8 and it still doesn't work we can try reinstalling IE7/8 I can't find the link to IE7 offline installer but if you can, good luck with that.

Download:
Internet Explorer 8 XP-English offline installer

copy it to a thumb drive and boot the computer with safemode / command prompt.

When you get a dos window type "explorer". It will allow you access to the GUI but you won't have network access. From there run the IE8 offline installer, and reboot.

Those are the steps I would take.

 

[Ccomp5950]

If you couldn't get into the repair console you could also try booting into safemode with command prompt and running

C:\windows\ie8\spuninst\spuninst.exe

and

C:\windows\ie7\spuninst\spuninst.exe

which would do the same thing as the portions above: uninstall IE7/8

-------------------------------

I've had to deal with this many times, it's not the most fun I've ever had working on a computer but it brings the money in, and the customers always appreciate having a working system instead of having to reinstall everything from scratch.

 

[Lone99star]

Thanks to everyone that replied, the computer belongs to a funeral home and they have a service at 9:00 am tomorrow.
Ccomp5950 you saved the day, after uninstalling ie8 I was able to actually get to the activation window, changed the activation code and bingo, its back from the grave.
Waiting for 81 updates to install, then I will work on the spooler problem that started the whole thing.

Thanks again.
Lone99star

 

[Ccomp5950]

Glad to hear it's up and running.

Let me know if you are ever up near Marshall (East Texas)

 

[jscx93]

that trick is always hugely handy!