Okay I've been ill for the past week, and I haven't been able to go on my Computer, but my little brother downloaded an illegal Windows XP for some reason, When I turn my computer on, its alright, but when its about to go on the go on the desktop, it shows a message saying that I have to activate the Windows XP key, when I click no, it saves my settings and goes back to the "Yes or "no" page, when I click yes, it says it already activated, I tried going on safe mode, but thats the same thing, so can anyone help me?

You wanna go to the boot menu in bios. If the old OS is still there u can boot to that and remove the xp one.

 

If not you're gonna have to do a clean install, the best option would be to do so on a new harddrive and boot for that so u can access documents etc on the old one

I haven't got an CD to reformat my Computer, but I've got it using the Keyboard keys, which I think is called Recovery partition?

Oh and I got my old product key on my computer, can I put that product key or something?

Recovery Partitions are useful but they only put your computer back to its out of the box state; eg it delets every single file and program that wasnt there when you first turned it on from the store.

 

I think that's universally true, unless they have improved them in recent years

Yeah I want to do that really, because my Computer really needs it :/

As long as you know what you're doing; it will permanently delete ALL your documents, I wanna stress that bit. Anything on there, photos, essays, contact lists, important emails all will be gone

Yes I know, but do you know how do do it?

Set the boot order for the Cd drive first - that way the disc will run and it should be fairly self -explanatory from thereon in.

 

EDIT: oh, its a recovery partition - do the same as above, just put the recovery partition first.

Well you use keyboard keyts to get to bios/boot menu and tell it to boot from the recovery partition.

 

This usually loads a very basic blue screen thing where you basically pick repair (if available/u havent alreayd tired tht) or reinstall and a confirmation warning u how it wipes stuff.

 

You hit next it will spend 10 mins - few hours basically reinstalling itself then boot up normally

 

On one of the very first screens it displays while booting it should say press --- for bios/setup menu and soemtines has a press --- for boot menu

 

If you have a boot menu use that, as that only tells it to boot once from the other place, in bios do as detialed above

If you want to move your files to an external hard drive or usb key, you can do it using a Linux Live CD, such as Ubuntu. Here's how to: How to back-up using a Linux Live CD.

 

I would go about doing that full recovery afterwards.

The way I done it a few years ago was I pressed F10 and F11 or something like that and it showed my "PC EYE" logo and the rest, I forgot what happends after that.

Okay I found the blue screen, and it shows these options "Standard CMOS Features" "Advanced BIOS Features" "Advanced Chipset Features" "Integrated Periphreals" "Power Management Setup" "PnP/PCI Configurations " H/W Monitor" "Cell Menu" "Load Optimized Defaults" "BIOS Setting Password" "Save & Exit Setup" and "Exit Without Saving"

 

Which option should I choose?

its under Advancd Bios normally I think.

 

Just have a look around ur in the menu system now, your looking for a list of boot order

Your right, It says 1st Boot Device: IDE0 2nd Boot Device: CDROM 3rd Boot Device: LAN Boot From Other Device: NO

you want to change the first boot device to the recovery partition

Is there a specific name for that, as I can't find it from the menu.

what options you do you have?

Floppy

LS120

IDE0

SCSI

CDROM

IDE1

IDE2

IDE3

ZIP100

USB-DD

USB-CDROM

USB-ZIP

USB-HDD

LAN

Disable

hmmm I think itd be the ZIPP one but I dunno you might wanna wait for someone hu knows more to reply

Can you tell me more about the recovery partition by7 the way?

Prebuilt pcs usually have em.

 

Its a hidden partition on the hard drive that basically is an installer to install windows and the default programs, thus allowing you to recover if your pc crashes.

 

Usuually you should have a disk to put in and it will boot it, but since you seem to lack such a disk it can be a bit trickier but not impossible.

So its like pressing a keyboard button and then it shows the reformatting menu?

The BIOS has nothing to do with the recovery partition unless it happened to be on a completely seperate hard drive (which I've never seen a PC Manufacturer do). This is because the BIOS can only select the hard drive to boot from, but your normal OS still has the boot flag, not your recovery partition.

 

Usually there's a key you can press for recovery which will force it to boot from that specific partition, however if that doesn't seem to work at all then there's a fairly easy way around it, you can force it to boot to that partition using Linux.

 

All you need to do is grab an Ubuntu LiveCD, run the Partition Editor (GParted), and assign the boot flag to the recovery partition and apply it. This would remove the boot flag from your main partition as well and when you next rebooted it would boot off the recovery one. After the recovery has finished the boot flag should automatically be reset to the main partition by the installation process.

Usually there's a key you can press for recovery

 

Whats this called, because I got that on my PC.