OT : Paging MS Business Partners

Just suppose, theoretically like, one had ordered all the bits
required to build a Home Theatre PC.

Including a legit copy of MS Media Center 2005 OEM.

And just suppose said bits arrived at the users house, and they
happily built the PC, no problems.

And then plugged it all in, started installing MS MCE and it ground to
a halt half way through CD1. And upon inspecting CD1 a huge dirty great
scratch was found, caused by something gouging out the scratch from the
printed side of the CD, so no chance of using the toothpaste trick.

And then just suppose that person phoned Scan, got them to copy CD1 and
post the copy down to them, and that person then went down south to
visit a friend. They left whilst the cleaner was cleaning their house.

And when they got back, they discovered that the shrink wrap envelope
with the MS MCE product key on it had done a runner. Was absolutely
nowhere to be found.

So they've ended up with a pooter with nothing installed on it, a
fecked CD1 (replacement on its way), a usable CD2, and no bloody
product key so they can't bloody install it anyway.

****.

Theoretical ****.

Upon phoning Microsoft about the knackered CD1 this person was told
that since MCE was not sold to end users, this would be classed as a
business enquiry, and that'd be £399 + VAT thankyouverymuch. So it'd
obviously be useless phoning MS about the lost key.

So, could someone in the business, who is an MS partner, phone MS up
and say "user's MCE machine has crashed and wiped out their OS, they've
lost the physical product key sticker, can you give me one?"?
Theoretically of course.

Its enough to drive a man to drink.

<quaffs Leffe Blonde>

 

Since when?
MS cds and product keys have always been interchangeable as long as it's for
the same product and subtype.

It's nice and easy to find on bittorrent type sites.
--
Alex

Hermes: "We can't afford that! Especially not Zoidberg!"
Zoidberg: "They took away my credit cards!"

www.drzoidberg.co.uk www.ebayfaq.co.uk

 

Dr Zoidberg? He'z just ziz guy, you know?

Yup. CDs mass produced so it'd be impossible to do that anyway. MS do
download all these torrents and search for published keys and add them
all to the blocked keys list pereventing users from using windows
update, which is where I don't want to end up.

Downloaded one supposedly from the MSDN subscription (there are only
about 2 I found with a decent rating).

Of course it wants to be authorised. So its not a proper MSDN one.

Built a (i thought) good CD from the damaged original one I had and the
torrent one, but somethings wrong with it cause installing the ATI gfx
drivers crashes XP MCE. (but with normal XP Pro they install fine).

Scan have sent me a couple of backup copies of the CDs so I'll have a
go at installing them, still stuck for a genuine prod code though :-(

 

ITYF that's not strictly true, at least in terms of OEM stuff (which may not
apply in this case)

AIUI companies like Dell and HP make their own keys (there was a peice on
this in PR Pro a while back) and MS keys often don't work.

Certainly I've never found a key from one disk work on another, but again,
this is OEM

ISTBC of course

Geniune advantage actually seems to work
--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7 156 TS S2
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Wrong. What you *must* use is a licence key for the same version of the
OS (ie - you can't just use an XP Home license).

Phil

 

Bluelist keygen may work. You should be able to find one somewhere.

 

Rope is a "self-employed IT consultant".

lol

 

Virtually all the new products available on MSDN downloads require
authentification.

You're thinking of "Select" I think where the key isn't required - these
aren't available to download AFAIA.

 

mb scribbled:

Tried it, that produces keys for the Volume Licensed edition of XP Pro,
XP Pro MCE uses a different set of keys, but thanks.

 

frag scribbled:

<snip>


Well thanks to the rip-off support available from Microsoft, the MS
help & support news group (what a joke!) that couldn't help itself find
its own arsehole, I've given up on getting any legit help.


<fx>
buys cheap USB memory stick
makes program to decrypt prod key from registry and dump in a file
bungs program on usb stick and sets it up to autorun
wanders off to local computer stores
</fx>