Fresh install of XP, lost XP licence key

Ive a 3 year old laptop, it needs XP reinstalled because it's corrupt.

The laptop was purchased with XP professional installed (all legal and licenced from HP)
I no longer have the XP cd which probably came with the laptop, and I no longer have the XP licence key.

What are my options to get a cd with XP and a licence key so that I can reinstall it

Would it be OK to borrow a cd from a friend and use this for the install (using my friends licence key).

Finally, does every XP key work with every XP cd, i.e. if i could get hold of my XP key, could I use it with any XP professional cd ?

Do you not have a COA sticker with the key on it ?

jhegarty said:

Do you not have a COA sticker with the key on it ?

Click to expand...

Cheers I've just found out what a COA means (certificate of Authenticity)

No I dont have one, there probably was a COA sticker on the back of the laptop, but it's not there anymore, some bored person peeled it away at some stage (not me).

If you have to reinstall Windows XP you normally will have to reactivate too. Well not anymore. Just copy wpa.dbl after you activated the first time. It is located in the WINDOWS\system32 folder. Now if you reinstall Windows XP just copy the file back and you're up and running again.

Great answer Venice, just what I needed

LC,

A bit more detail,

How to backup or transfer out the Windows XP activation information

• Open My Computer or Windows Explorer.
• Navigate to the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder (normally C:\Windows\System32). You may have to click on the Show the contents of this folder link to display the files.
• Copy WPA.DBL and WPA.BAK to a floppy disk, USB key flash drive, portable external hard disk or burn the files to a CD or DVD.
• Go ahead to reformat hard disk drive and reinstall Windows XP on the same computer.
• After the installation is completed and the Windows XP Out of Box Experience (OOBE) window appear, click on No button when asked if user want to activate to skip and decline going through the activation process.
• Restart the computer and press F8 on boot up and then select to start in Minimal [COLOR=blue! important][COLOR=blue! important]Safe [COLOR=blue! important]Mode[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] in “Advanced Boot Options” menu.
• Open My Computer or Windows Explorer.
• Navigate to the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder (normally C:\Windows\System32). You may have to click on the Show the contents of this folder link to display the files.
• Rename the WPA.DBL and WPA.BAK (if exists) that currently reside in the directory.
• Copy the original WPA.DBL and WPA.BAK previously backed up to the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder.
• Restart the computer. Windows XP should be activated instantly and automatically.

This might be worth a try.

If you can boot the system you can recover your Microsoft keys using the utility Hoagy gave the link for. If it won't boot then lucky for you I've been working on a solution for a customer of mine this week. You would need to send me the SOFTWARE hive from your registry. You can use Knoppix or some other bootable CD to extract this file (called SOFTWARE and usually found in C:\WINDOWS\system32\config). In both cases this assumes the license key in the registry is your license and not HP's default volume license.

Note that to use a HP OEM license key you'll need a HP OEM installation CD or it won't validate.

Venice's solution sounds neat for the XP license - have you successfully tried this? I'm guessing it won't work for an MS office license? Is there a simmilar DLL that can be copied for this? The solution I'm working on should be able to extract the keys for both.

Yeah, worked for me, as long as there is no major hardware changes it should be ok.

Hi, I have a similar problem to this, but also different, I have an old windows xp pro cd with the cd key hand written on cd cover sheet. I had a wiped machine today and tried to install xp and to my horror, the cd key didn't work. Is there any way of getting the cd key from the cd like in key finder link given above?
Thanks

The license info is not stored on the CD. Does the machine you have wiped have an XP License sticker on it with a valid license key?