need help with Hard Drive upgrade

The big difference in the retail and OEM packs is the simple lack of the fancy cardboard carton and paperback manual that goes into details on Windows. That's what you pay $200- more for there. The OEM is the stripped down to disk, booklet, and product key in a small disk holder for those with assumed experience in system building. The full definition on Original Equipment Manufacturer can reviewed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_equipment_manufacturer
 
There are MS instructions for seeiing if the Certificate Of Authencity is present. The giudelines for this are seen at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/en/coa.mspx If something doesn't match the criteria there... move onto something else. In most cases right away the item should be seen at a regular known vendor. If you are going after something used then I would be a little worrysome there.
 
Coa

Thanks for the link. I think I'm getting it.
The link from a few posts back shows XP with the COA.
Here is one that doesn't mention the coa, so I emailed him and he said that a COA does not come with it. Windows XP no COA I'm thinking that this would not be legal software for me to install on my laptop. What do you think?
 
The picture seen there as well as the actual disk look like a normal Windows disk. The way it is displayed there doesn't reveal any product number on the sticker usually on the reverse side and the COA emblem is blocked from view. Knowing the rep of the dealer would be the thing to look at. You can't go by the picture seen alone. The disks themselves are generally shipped in an 8"x 11 1/4" vanilla envelope with Microsoft labeling on them. The title will be the "Microsoft OEM System Builder Pack" as seen as on at least one of the labels. The COA sticker will be stapled onto the booklet that comes sealed in a clear plastic wrap. That's probably a valid copy but the way it is illustrated does leave you wondering. "If in doubt toss it out!" goes for the party selling it if not a regular vendor.
 
Here's what happened. I didn't need the new install disk. I took the 40gb drive and formated 8gb as FAT. Then I used the origninal recover disk to install XP Pro on the 8gb partition. Laptop would not boot at this time. Then I booted with a 98 install disk and went into the the recovery console and did a fixmbr. This did not work when I used the other disk and NTFS. Then I went to reboot and forgot to take out the 98 floppy and hit the eject and the screen said operatiing system not found, put floppy in drive A and hit any key. I kept the floppy out and hit a key and the darn thing went into the windows set up from the hard drive. After downloading and installing lots of windows updates, the laptop is running again!!! Strange story if you ask me.
 
The installation files were copied BUT you forgot the floppy? :P That was good! Did you know you could have had XP Pro on an 8gb NTFS partition. Once you created the 8gb fat primary you could have let the XP installer format it to NTFS when installing Windows onto it. You can still see that converted to NTFS however with a few simple steps.

1) go to the "Start>Programs>Accessories" and open up the command prompt from there.

2)Here's where you will need the drive's volume serial to enter VOL C: xxxxx-xxxxxx whatever and press the enter/return key

3)then type in CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS and do the same there. Then answer Y for yes when the prompt comes up for confirmation. Of course this is done before activating Windows online.
 
I did install XP Pro on the 8gb. I only used the 98 boot disk to get to the recovery console and use fixmbr. The XP Pro fixmbr would never work, it always gave me an error pertaining to FAT. So now I am afraid to try and convert to NTFS. I'm afraid that the boot sector will be messed up in the conversion. Oh, and I already activated my windows. I didn't know that would affect any conversion attempts. Of course now I can only do so much with a system disk of 8gb! aughhhh!
 
For the repair of the mbr and boot sector information for XP is not done with a 98 startup floppy! That's where you are going on a a wild goose chase and not seeing results. Why you left the 8gb as Fat32 and didn't create a new NTFS primary for the newer version of Windows is another matter since XP can install to Fat16 as well as Fat32. Even if it is on an NTFS type you can still access a Fat partition while in XP. That was another thing improved over 2000.

To run the "Fixmbr" and "Fixboot" commands you first boot with the XP installation disk and choose the "press R now to repair at recovery console" option instead of the "press enter now to install Windows". Once you are at the command prompt in dos like window you type either or both of the two commands in to see the boot information rewritten. You will first see the prompt asking if you want to log onto the "1> C:\Windows\" there.
 
Yep, did all that from the xp cd a couple of times, no luck. then installed xp on the fat 8gb and booted with the 98 floppy/cd and did the fixmbr and didn't get the error that I got when I tried the same thing with the xp cd. Everything I did with the 98 cd I had previously tried with the xp cd. The xp cd would never execute the fixmbr without giving an error.
 
That's the drawback of not having an XP installed on an NTFS partition was apparent when you saw the errors with the recovery disk. The one way out is to wipe the new drive to get rid of the 8gb Fat32 partition and create a new NTFS type primary for XP to go onto. Even though XP will easily install to a Fat partition it's native to the better NTFS type.
 
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