Redwolf Posted June 28, 2006 Share Posted June 28, 2006 Do you guys know this? I am trying to move my gaming to a notebook and want my trusty Win2K. But although I have a full legal boxed version of Win2K it refuses to install on my Thinkpad. Says invalid key, but the same key installs elsewhere. Now a friend of mine is struggling with installing XP professional (which she needs for some stuff required for SQL) on a Fujitsu notebook that came with media edition. Full boxed version, installs on desktops, refuses on the notebook. Says invalid key on the Fujitsu, key works elsewhere. Is that because they have some other version of Windoze in the hidden partitions used for recovery? How do I solve this? What exactly is Windoze install not happy about here. In both cases we are talking full boxed retail Windows versions that did not come with a different PC first. They install everywhere else, just not on these notebooks. And people wonder why I don't use Windoze except for games 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted June 29, 2006 Share Posted June 29, 2006 Are these blank/empty partitions or is there a version of Windows on there already ? The only time I'm aware of keys being considered invalid (that aren't) is if another Windows partition is found and the registry on that partition reports a different key than what you're entering. I'd assume that a hidden partition wouldn't be seen by the installer and thus it couldn't see that partition's registry to compare against. However this theory falls apart if you're trying to install a different version of Windows, where I'd assume it wouldn't expect a matching key for different versions. You may want to experiment with KeyFinder (if you're not already familiar with it) and see if replacing the current key with your new key will help with the installation. Of course you'll probably want to find your current installation's key to make so you can restore it (but I'm not absolutely sure that would consistently work). Beyond that I'm mystified, since I don't believe that the installer can recognize the laptop in any manner (firmware, etc.) to invalidate the key. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hpt. Lisse Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 this is after a full format C: ? I mean, my laptop (933 MHz, non-CM playing mother that it is) came w/win2K, but I wiped it off and put XPpro on it... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted June 30, 2006 Author Share Posted June 30, 2006 Yeah, I think the harddrives before the attempted installs might not have been as clean as I thought. My friend did apparently not clobber the old Windows partition, she used partitionmagick to create a new C and D drive instead of just C. But apparently she instructed partitionmagick to squeeze the old C drive in the new one, not create an empty C partition. The real question is why do Mickeysoft's error message have to be so useless? I mean if it is a case that you cannot install over the current C:, why doesn't it say so? Why isn't there an option to just nuke the current C drive? Why is there no warning? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibsonm Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 “Mickeysoft'” - You just answered your own question. Ah but in 2, no 3, no 4, no 5, no 6 .... years when Longhorn, Vista, ... comes out it will be so much better (almost as good as OS X 10.0) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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