Solved: win xp trial version.....locked up cpu

[Treasurerat]

my brother brought over his pentium 3 pavilion HP cpu that was running win 98 se..he was given by somebody a 60 day trial version CD of xp which he installed..i could not do anything with the system as it has placed an authorization Expired lock on the OS..i looked in the bios and it shows win 98/2000 as the OS ..how can i disable the trial verson and restore the original os?... i can only boot up in safe mode and system restore has no date's available to set it back to..when booting up from the start it boots fine but then defaults to the authorization code block to continue using xp...i was thinking of wiping the HD and using my Gateway 98se install cd but i am not sure if it will work on the HP?..any tips or advice on fixing this problem is greatly appreceiated...ps a tech loaned me an HP XP recovery CD but that also failed saying that it is to be used on HPMachines only..which this is...go figure

 

[Elvandil]

It would need to be uninstalled from Add/Remove if the old files were saved.

 

[Treasurerat]

could not locate the files in add/remove either

 

[Elvandil]

Then there is probably no way to go back except to reformat the drive and reinstall 98.

 

[Treasurerat]

okay....the HP tech that loaned me the xp recovery cd will take care of it tonight..he said the same thing...gotta go to the OS Direct to correct it..for 60 bucks he will reformat hd and reload good XP and office 2003 also go thru all devices and install any drivers and programs needed...thanks for your replies much apprecieated!

 

[Elvandil]

Unfortunately, there is no "trial" version of XP, so it must have been a full version.

Good luck.

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