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Real Idiot Question
Well, I did it. I bought a Dell Lattitude D600 (two of them) used. They worked fine. I gave one to myself and one to my wife.
The system that my wife has got very slow. I had her go in and have the computer check and repair damaged clusters. Did I mention that I was using AVG 8.0 as a antivirus program?
Things seemed to speed up for a bit and Now - CRASH the computer - unknown to us - dumped its memory. I was not able to even get it up into safe mode. Did I mention that we did not receive any discs for the operating system or the other items on the computer?
Well, in my attempt to recover the stuff that we had to have off of the computer - I took my Home Edition XP Program that works on my desk-top and overwrote the XP Professional OS so that I could at least get the important files. I got them, but I cannot get the programs - which were paid for, licensed and downloaded from the internet without discs.
Everything that Dell wants me to do, I have to be online with that computer - oh - did I forget to mention that my wife wiped down her computer - the service tag fell off and I cannot find where I put it?
Anyone got any ideas of what I can do to remove the Home Edition Program that I loaned to the computer and get it online so I can download the operating system for my computer. I do have the original Key for the XP Professional - but I don't even know how to start. Also I have an external Hard drive that I could hook up, but I do not know how to run a back-up onto it - any help here?
Just not having a good day. My wife really uses her computer mainly for gaming and looking at e-mail - I guess that is all lost too. What an Idiot I must be to do something stupid like this. Any help would be greatly appreciated: you can e-mail me direct at
Thanks - Rick
TheRealFireblad
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March 13th, 2009 15:00
Welcome to the forums Rick :emotion-21:
As the old (Laurel and Hardy) saying goes: "That's another fine mess you've gotten me into!" :emotion-3:
For a start... I don't understand why you had to use your XP Home disc, in an attempt to recover files?
If... as you suggest... you "overwrote" the previous installation, you'll have wiped everything from the hard drive in the process!?
Unless you did a 'Repair' install of course?
And did you not get invoices with them - which should've included information such as the service tag?
Where did you buy the laptops? Was it from an official Dell retailer, or privately?
Did the laptop not have a 'Recovery' partition on it you could've used to restore it to the factory settings?
If you formatted the hard drive, before you installed XP Home, you'll have deleted the recovery partition, unfortunately :emotion-6:
All is not lost however, if your laptop is exactly the same as your wife's?
You can create an image of your hard drive, and use it to restore your wife's laptop :emotion-55:
And you can request backup discs, but the laptop will have to be registered in your/your wife's name(s) first.
Assuming the laptops were purchased from a retail store, you can do that, by completing this 'Registering a Dell system purchased from a retail store' form.
If you bought them privately... it's in the lap of the Gods (or in this case Dell) whether you'll get replacement discs from Dell?
If not... you'll have to try and get hold of a Dell OEM XP Pro disc from elsewhere, and use the official serial you've got to activate it.
But it'll have to be exactly the same disc - i.e. if the pre-installed OS was XP Pro with SP1, then it's a Dell OEM XP Pro with SP1 disc you need to get hold of.
You can't download the OS, so you'll have to get a Dell OEM OS disc. It's either that, or buy a new (OEM) XP Pro for it.
If you do manage to get hold of one, you can use it to reinstall the OS, then go to the 'Drivers & Downloads' page for the Latitude D600, to get all the drivers.