Mce Oem

[Doomy]

HEy all,

I just got myself an advent 7111 laptop which is rather nice for the price and to my utter shock I now have a legitimate OS that is windows MCE 2005. Slight problem with it being that it refuses to create recovery discs, I have been onto support and they suggest taking it back so they can provide free recovery discs or replace the laptop. Fine.

What I really want to do is install MCE so it doesnt install all the crap that comes with said laptops, theres an unbelievable amount of shite on them and wont delete the recovery files etc as they are on a hidden partition. Fresh install with clean MCE sounds nice. I am currently downloading a new windows OEM set of discs and would just like to know whether my legit key is going to work with this or if its all entirely hardware dependent.

 

[Chilly]

in theory its probably illegal. but at the end of the day, you paid for a copy of windows mce - so even if you dl a dodgy copy and install it with a legit key no one is going to care. and it will most likely work, there is a possibility you may have to phone ms and ask for a reactivation and explain why but thats normally pretty painless.

 

[Kryten]

Had the same issue with a Packard Bell PC. Unfortunately, no matter how many restore disks you make - the PC will only activate with the version of windows, complete with all the utter shit the OEM thinks you want/need installed.

Microsoft are damned slight more helpful, however - and will happily provide a shiney, working, brand new key & activation wotsits for you at no charge.

 

[Doomy]

Had the same issue with a Packard Bell PC. Unfortunately, no matter how many restore disks you make - the PC will only activate with the version of windows, complete with all the utter shit the OEM thinks you want/need installed.

Microsoft are damned slight more helpful, however - and will happily provide a shiney, working, brand new key & activation wotsits for you at no charge.

And what exactly did you do to make ms do that? Talk me through it pretty please.

 

[Kryten]

Just emailed them, explained the situation - I could not afford to fork out 40 quid for Packard Bells recovery CD (bollocks, but it worked) - I have a legal XP CD and a sticker on the side of my PC with a key that didnt work.

No questions asked - he just gave me another key to use with the version of the CD that I did have

easy as that

 

[Doomy]

Didnt even have to, It just installed fine, was lucky with OEM version I guess, cant activate it on my laptop but thats just there for emulators anyway so a few naughty .exe's and done.

I have a legit copy on my games machine now which is quite nice.