Keen design!
Feb. 17th, 2005 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpCould someone explain to me why - when one uses a Windows system restore disk that is designed to work on only one model of computer - does the startup procedure insist on having me input a product key that was originally on a separate piece of documentation?
I mean: you can't use this disk for any other purpose, so it's not like you could use the disk over and over again on just any machine that comes within reach!
Then again, I haven't tried... nor would I even want to.
So there I was, pretty upset at having to cough up a product key from somewhere, knowing from past experience that not just any product key will do. (At some point back in the day, some of the sharp kids in Redmond figured out that OEM versions of Windows ought to respond only to special OEM product keys, and I was fresh out.) Out of frustration more than anything else, I input a stray product key that's on the envelope of (and different from) the product key of my legal Windows Me install disk.
And the eSlate swallowed the thing, without a squawk.
(Maybe the whole thing was a sham? Maybe it would've accepted the phone number of the courthouse downtown as a product key? We'll never know!)
Quoting Shepherd: "Excelsior!"
Cheers...
P.S. The sad thing is, I am all but sure I covered this in an LJ post or two some time back, when I was faced with the same circumstance. It turns out not only to be a small world, but a cyclic one, as well.
I mean: you can't use this disk for any other purpose, so it's not like you could use the disk over and over again on just any machine that comes within reach!
Then again, I haven't tried... nor would I even want to.
So there I was, pretty upset at having to cough up a product key from somewhere, knowing from past experience that not just any product key will do. (At some point back in the day, some of the sharp kids in Redmond figured out that OEM versions of Windows ought to respond only to special OEM product keys, and I was fresh out.) Out of frustration more than anything else, I input a stray product key that's on the envelope of (and different from) the product key of my legal Windows Me install disk.
And the eSlate swallowed the thing, without a squawk.
(Maybe the whole thing was a sham? Maybe it would've accepted the phone number of the courthouse downtown as a product key? We'll never know!)
Quoting Shepherd: "Excelsior!"
Cheers...
P.S. The sad thing is, I am all but sure I covered this in an LJ post or two some time back, when I was faced with the same circumstance. It turns out not only to be a small world, but a cyclic one, as well.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-02-18 03:41 am (UTC)Most of the stuff I've seen out of the likes of HP and Dell have a "Made for Windows Whatever" sticker/license tag/product key on them somewhere.
You're lucky you have a restore disk at all. Of the last two encounters I've had where I've needed a "system restore disk", one was merely a CD with a few megs of files that booted and then reinstalled everything from a hidden partition (Compaq), and the other was *user-generated* from a utility so it could reinstall from a partition (HP).
Unholy evil.
But you probably already knew all this.