[nzlug] recondition laptop windows licence revisited

[Jack Pivac]

Simon Bridge wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-12-31 at 18:12 +1300, Jack Pivac wrote:
>   
>> Simon Bridge wrote:
>>     
>>> I see no C:\i386, but there is a C:\WINDOWS\I386 with lots of stuff in
>>> it. Nothing that looks like an iso or raw CD image. No recovery
>>> partition either. Of course - if I burned the content of this directory
>>> to a CD, perhaps that's the recovery disk?
>>>   
>>>       
>> Yup thats what you're after. If you get into dos (and load smartdrv) you
>> can start a windows install from this data.
>> I cant remember what the installer is called.. possibly winnt.exe.
>> If you dont load smartdrv it takes about 20 hours :D
>>     
>
> Ha... so that's how reconditioners can erase and restore the HDDs
> without a licence violation. It is all clear now.
>
> This also means I could have saved the other three licences against a
> resell... nahhh!
>   
Hrrrm.. not quite. I'm pretty sure you still have to activate etc etc 
after the install.
But.... I also understand there is a file or 2 that if you extract 
before you format then replace after the install (with a reg key as 
well) then you don't have to activate... I tried it once but it didin't 
work for me but was a long time ago and I was in a hurry and I'm pretty 
sure other people did it successfully.