Laptop won't take XP key

[bossman]

@witch:

You give up far too easily hehe!

Go get em tiger!!!

[tech_guy]

It's a Sony, Give up now.

[RabbieBurns]

are you sure you are typing it correctly :P

[witch]

@witch:

You give up far too easily hehe!

You know me better than that - I NEVER give up.

And as for typing it in correctly - EVERYONE IN THE HOUSE HAS TYPED IN EVERY KEY I HAVE - including the dog AND IT JUST DOESN'T ****** WORK (cue Kermit arms)

[HallX]

On the off chance, try plugging an external keyboard in and use that. You never know.

[tech_guy]

At my old place I had a colleague who nearly went mental because the key on the sticker on the PC didn't work despite numerous attempts and lots of swearing. He refused to let anyone try and I still remember him shouting down the phone at the poor old Microsoft cannon fodder techie who was trying to help. They kept telling him the key he was reading out was wrong and he was insisting that was what was printed on it. I had a look at the sticker and pointed out that what he thought was an '8' was in fact a 'B'............

[sidewinder]

Is number lock on? I'm sure you've checked that, but it's something that has caught me out before

[witch]

No number lock, no 8's instead of B's - how I wish it was that easy...External keyboard gives same result

[2097]

With OEM machines you need the appropriate OEM disc from that manfacture i believe .

Not sure if XP uses SLIC like Vista and 7 , but windows 7 for example allows the use of a NON oem disc providing it has SLIC information in the Bios.

[sted]

i know its a faf but could you just put the drive in another pc get the install past the key bit then put back in the real laptop for driver detection etc?

[witch]

i know its a faf but could you just put the drive in another pc get the install past the key bit then put back in the real laptop for driver detection etc?

Yeah, I did think of that but don't have a handy IDE laptop anywhere at home. Could ferret one out at work I suppose. I am going to try the XP home disc kindly provided by both @mattx + and @Arthur and see where I get to then

[sted]

woeth a go might be worth trying to flash the bios as maybe it is a slic issue and a newer version sill be less problamatic

[witch]

...right - have now tried the two XP home isos I was so kindly sent...
and neither work - or rather, I get the press any key to boot from CD message but then, nothing....
AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Arthur]

Do you just get a black screen with a flashing cursor after you have pressed the any key?

[mattx]

...right - have now tried the two XP home isos I was so kindly sent...
and neither work - or rather, I get the press any key to boot from CD message but then, nothing....
AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Hmmmm - dodgy CD Rom ? Do you have a USB CD drive you can try ?
Failing that see if you can get it to boot via a Linux Live CD or UBCD - Ultimate Boot CD - Overview