reinstallation will not accept OEM# 2

[y2k1981]

God somebody please help me. My friend recently bought a second hand computer with '95 (actually it says 95 plus - never heard of it myself) on it. Somebody (I don't know how, but it's irrelevant) had deleted some files etc so there are some system files corrupt now. I figured the easier thing was to re-run setup, however, as he doesn't have windows 95, I got a CD rom from work to reinstall it. No matter what OEM# I try, it doesn't work. I don't have the OEM# from the original installation, do I need to use that one? Is it looking for that OEM# again?

Second problem!! I did find a utility somewhere that will allow me to get the OEM# from the registry ... however, I also found a link on

http://www.95isalive.com

which brought me to here -->

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

I downloaded the utility to create the 95 boot disk and booted with it (I wanted to try this out before trying to reinstall '95). then I typed

sys C:

- and hey presto, it seemed pretty good. until I tried to boot, it says that I need DOS 8 or higher. so it won't boot into '95 (to get the original OEM# and see if that works) because it doens't have DOS 8 or higher and it won't let me finish the reinstallation either. What's a guy to do!?!?!

Before somebody asks, no, I didn't backup anything before I copied those files from the boot disk

please, can anybody help me out here?

 

[wolluf]

The link and both 95a & b are working from here. I think version match is important, because 95b was a fairly major upgrade (included fat32 support). Certainly worth trying other 95 boot disks to see if you get a better result. The version thing might be responsible for not accepting key. keys for 95 a don't work for b and vice versa (different format in fact).

A temporary parallel installation is installing win95 on same partition but to a different system folder (ie, not \windows). This leaves original intact, but lets you boot into windows - so you can access stuff on the drive more easily if you want to do any backups etc. You can just remove the temporary systems folder later when you reinstall over existing one to repair it (but it obviously takes up space - which is why I asked about that as win95 machines tend to have small hard drives).

 

[BuckeyeComputers]

There is several different ways to accomplish what you need... the biggest problem seems to lie in incorrect version......Try this... boot with the floppy that you have and then do a dir of the floppy itself.. and look at the date of command.com.... then go to the c:\windows\command folder and do a dir and look at the date of that command.com.... you should be able to copy that command.com to your floppy and then reboot.. as i dont think the version of io.sys will hender the wrong version conflict

 

[y2k1981]

I just called my friend and he had a look at the dates. the one on the floppy has a 1995 date and the one on the HDD has a 1996 date. I had him copy the command.com from C: to A: (but first, I backed up the old copy to a temp folder on the hard drive ... once bitten, twice shy!!!) and had him boot with it. it says that the command.com file is missing or corrupt and it gave some other message too, but I can't remember what. He tried to access the hard drive but it just kept saying that the command.com was missing or corrupt. so I have another boot disk that I can bring there and get the old command.com (the one that was originally on the floppy) back from the HDD to the floppy.

I didn't think to ask him about the dates on the io.sys files though.

any ideas? I know that I've said this before, but I REALLY do appreciate all the help everybody's giving me. Don't know if you saw my suggestion above about deleting the system.dat file, or renaming it system.old - would that work so that it would at least accept any OEM#?

 

[BuckeyeComputers]

go back to bootdisk.com and get a 95b bootdisk and sys the drive... that should correct the version... as in renaming the system.dat file i guess this might be worth a try, but keep in mind that without that file windows will create a new one and all programs and drivers may have to be reinstalled... if your not worried about the programs then you could also alway just do a deltree of the windows folder and then reinstall..... but i would seriously try getting the right version of a boot disk first

 

[drdebit]

tophat2's suggestion in thread615-217682 helped me with win98
i used this idea/concept on an me machine to get the key from a virus ridden unbootable 98 drive slaved to it.

 

[y2k1981]

wolluf, sorry, I just saw your post now ... I wasn't ignoring you, I promise!! I still can't access that link, and I tried it on 2 PC's. I think it might be something to do with a bad entry in a routing table with our ISP - it's not the first time I've experienced something likt this. If it's not too much trouble, would one of you mind e-mailing it to mmmcdermo@hotmail.com, if you're allowed download at work that is?

I didn't realize that renaming the system.dat file would mean having to reinstall the programs ... formating the drive would be a better option that that I think!!

drdebit, I'll have a look at your suggestion later, thanks for that.

 

[BuckeyeComputers]

Check your email this disk should have the correct files to sys your drive

 

[y2k1981]

hey lads,

OK, an update. Firstly, thanks again buckeye for sending on the bootdisk. I tried that one last night, but I couldn't

sys C:

with it because it didn't have the sys command on it. I tried copying the sys command from the other boot disk but because they were different version it didn't work. So, when I booted with that disk, it solved the version conflict. I wasn't able to export the registry or do anything with it, every time I tried something it just said that there was an error reading the registry. So, after I tried using edit.com to read the system.dat file (which still gave me the same error) - I decided that the only other option left was to try my own suggestion about renaming the system.dat file and then trying out any OEM# - and sure enough - it worked!!

Here's my plan - hopefully somebody can verify if this is a good idea or not.
1. I've gotten the OEM# out of the system.dat file (in fact I got about seven!!)
2. Can I now replace the system.dat file that was created last night during installation with the old system.dat file and rerun setup again - this time I'll have the correct OEM#. Will this work?

There did appear to be a version conflict during installation, some dll's and a few .exe's (not important ones, things like MS chat etc) had newer version on the HDD than on the CD-ROM, so I kept the newest version ... was that the right thing to do? As I said, I'm not too well up on '95 - how many different (signifigant) versions are there? And how do you check what version is installed on your PC?

Thanks again for all your help

 

[wolluf]

y2k1981,

You said earlier about dates - 'the one on the HDD has a 1996 date'. This means the originally installed version is OSR2 (OSR2 is dated August 1996, I think 2.1 is 1997 and 2.5 is 1998 -

http://www.winbookcorp.com/_technote/WBTA17000454.htm

has some info about determining 95 version. The original version is July 1995 and there is a sevice packed version of that from December 1995 if I remember rightly).

So, you need an OSR2 install CD (files on it should be dated August 1996) - or later. The key should be in the format nnnnn-nnnnnnn-nnnnn. If you've got right key & CD then I'd give it a whirl.

PS. Bit surprised that boot disk Buckeye sent didn't have sys on it - I'll send you another copy (which has definitely got sys on).

 

[justjoann]

Help - anyone please -

I want to give my husbands old Compaq 1256 laptop to my grandson for his confirmation so I did a system restore to clear all mu husband's business stuff off and now it is asking me for the Windows 98 product code. This is in storage in Seattle and as I am in the process of a move to Boston I don't have access to any of my files. I called Compaq and they told me I was out of warranty and to look on google to get the product code numbers but I have no idea where to look. Any help anyone can give me would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[y2k1981]

justjoan:

did you try looking in the system.dat file like buckeye suggested? I do have some OEM numbers (which I'm more than willing to give to you), but from my own experiences, I think you'll have to enter the one that's already in the system.dat file.

wolluf:
I got the file, thank you so much. I haven't ran the executible yet to produce the boot disk but I will later. I'll have to find out about getting my hands on the OSR2 CD (what does OSR stand for by the way?). So you think that if I replace the new system.dat with the old and enter the correct OEM# that the apps etc should be fine again? I was able to launch Excel last night, but it did give me an error. One question I forgot to put in my last post ... originally there were four errors saying that four different files were missing/corrupt. Now there's still one, there's an error in the, config.sys (at leastI think it's the config.sys) because line 1 refers to a directory called CD or CDROM (again, can't remember for definite!!) but that directory doesn't exist (the cd rom is working fine though). Should I edit the file and "comment out" that line so that the error goes away? If so, how do I comment it, should I use C style comments, or will I use

REM

- because I'm guessing this is a DOS file of sorts ?

Thanks again
Martin

 

[wolluf]

OSR - Operating System Release.

I must admit I've got lost as to the status of this 95 installation! From your last post, its working to a degree (Excel) - so have you effectively got a 'new' installation (installed from your current 95 CD & corresponding key - but over existing so data's there)? - which has set up a new registry (system.dat/user.dat). Which would mean, any apps which need registry settings won't work.

Did this install completely recreate the \windows folder or has it just updated what was there? (I ask as Office for example would have many files in \windows\system, which would mean a reinstall of Office if they've been wiped).

If all still in place, then putting original system.dat back & reinstalling OSR2 on top of itself may work (its been a long time since I did anything serious with win95 - but I do remember having this scenarios on a number of occasions. Sometimes installing over the top cured problem, sometimes needed a clean install aftrwards as it made no difference).

btw - I don't think you need same key as originally used - just a valid key for the version. As I said in earlier thread, original version of windows (OSR1) key was different format (nnn-nnnnnnn) than OSR2 (nnnnn-nnnnnnn-nnnnn) - so OSR1 key won't work with OSR2 and vice versa (in fact this is generally true of windows keys, even if format is the same).

 

[y2k1981]

hey wolluf,

Yeah, I'm not surprise you're lost ... I know I would be!! I don't think the installation created a new windows directory so no files will have been removed. I do have another CD, it's some sort of 2000 update, if I were to run that, would it update to OSR2?

One question I forgot to ask, I'm going to do some searching (and if I find it I'll post back) but does anybody happen to know where I can download the "windows 95 plus" upgrade?

 

[Crustyoldbloke]

A couple of sites for you to peruse:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/...nded/S_WUServicePacks/W95SvcPack1/default.asp

There are a few on this page also, about halfway down

http://www.cerious.com/download.shtml

Good luck! I hope I am proved wrong. Regards
Phil

 

[wolluf]

The Plus pack was sold separately - so you're unlikely to find a copy to download.

 

[madonnac]

Perhaps the 'out of memory error is due to the size of the file?

try this [old] utility

http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/51547.html

V. Buerg's classic ASCII/binary file viewer!

 

[onsite]

I believe the program here will help you out

http://www.62nds.co.nz/cgi-bin/x/e2110.html

Here is a quote from the site

From DOS (i.e. before Windows 9x starts up) it will tell you:

Where Windows was installed from (will you or won’t you need the CD)
Serial Number and Product Key
Computer Name and Workgroup
Screen saver time and password (don’t get locked out)
Screen resolution and refresh rate (will your monitor handle it)
What patches have been installed
Regional Settings (date/time/currency formats)
The odd registry settings that will cause you problems
It can list programs set to run when Windows starts
It can list 16-bit drivers that have been installed
It can list extra "Property Sheet" that have been installed
It can show you all Share names with access rights and passwords

 

[drdebit]

"One question I forgot to ask, I'm going to do some searching (and if I find it I'll post back) but does anybody happen to know where I can download the "windows 95 plus" upgrade?"

If you're willing to take a chance on ebay, i think you can find some there - search in computer software on windows plus and/or microsoft plus.

 

[greyted]

Hi y2k1981,
Try this link, it has some Win 95 downloads.

http://members.aol.com/axcel216/

HTH