cannot remove xp home

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Guest

New here, so I apologize if I am not speaking tech very clearly. It must be
very annoying to those of you who know what you are doing to hear requests
such as this.

I (innocently-stupidly, but innocently) bought a pirated copy of xp home
edition . No wonder the guy was so nice about installing it for me on my old
pc. Then I downloaded this same cd onto another pc when my old pc the guy
installed it on went belly up. Anyway, part of the features do not work.
Including add/remove. Only beeps. Went into H-KEYS to unistall. No unsinstall
option on H-KEYS. (I learned about this from another techie site). Will not
accept a command prompt because it says it is not activated. Of course I
cannot activate it. Not sure how the guy who installed it activated it
because it worked great on that computer. It also will not allow me to
download a single thing. That is how I began to realize something was wrong.
Now it is just a big mess.

I have tried everything that I thought I was capable of fixing. But if
anyone can give me advice on how to get this damned pirated copy off I would
sure be grateful. I want to buy a genuine copy to replace this with. At this
point even going back to win 98 on here would be great.

I am just furious at myself for being so naive. Not to mention that I feel
like criminal.

Anyway, any help or ideas, tips, experience anyone has with this problem
would be much appreciated.

dena
 
dena said:
New here, so I apologize if I am not speaking tech very clearly. It
must be very annoying to those of you who know what you are doing
to hear requests such as this.

I (innocently-stupidly, but innocently) bought a pirated copy of xp
home edition . No wonder the guy was so nice about installing it
for me on my old pc. Then I downloaded this same cd onto another
pc when my old pc the guy installed it on went belly up. Anyway,
part of the features do not work. Including add/remove. Only beeps.
Went into H-KEYS to unistall. No unsinstall option on H-KEYS. (I
learned about this from another techie site). Will not accept a
command prompt because it says it is not activated. Of course I
cannot activate it. Not sure how the guy who installed it activated
it because it worked great on that computer. It also will not
allow me to download a single thing. That is how I began to realize
something was wrong. Now it is just a big mess.

I have tried everything that I thought I was capable of fixing. But
if anyone can give me advice on how to get this damned pirated copy
off I would sure be grateful. I want to buy a genuine copy to
replace this with. At this point even going back to win 98 on here
would be great.

I am just furious at myself for being so naive. Not to mention that
I feel like criminal.

Anyway, any help or ideas, tips, experience anyone has with this
problem would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Buy your legitimate copy, perform a repair installation using the new
license (product) key and CD.

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341

That way - you don't lose your settings/files/installed applications.
(No guarantees though - always best to backup first anyway.)
(Actually - always best to always perform periodic backups.)
 
Personally I have never encountered a pirated version of XP that has
Add/Remove stripped out. That simply wouldn't make any sense to sell or
install something like that as the complaints would immediate role in. What
I suspect is that you may not be logged on to an account which has
Administrator privileges. Try restarting the computer and keep tapping the
F8 key until you see a boot options menu. Use the arrow keys to select Safe
Mode and press Enter. Let XP load to the point where it gives you a log on
screen. Select Administrator and press the Enter Key. XP should load to the
Desktop. Go to Start->Settings->Control Panel->User Accounts. Change the
account that you normally log onto so that it is now an Administrator
account. OK out, reboot and let XP start normally. See if you now have full
options.

If not contact the vendor and tell them about your problem. Perhaps they
gave you faulty disk. Many system builders have licensed OEM versions of XP
that they use to install the OS. They are required to give you a process to
reinstall the OS or enable you to get back to the point of purchase
condition in some manner. Check with the system builder. They may have given
you a faulty disk and it is actual legal.

Another option is to check here to see if you have a legit copy
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/ww/windows/default.mspx

If you really think this is a pirated copy then see if you can boot the
computer using that CD. Meaning restart the computer with the CD in the
drive. When prompted to "press any key to boot the CD...." do so. You should
see the black screen change to a blue screen and see that a few Setup files
are being run. You should get to a screen that says Welcome to Setup. At
this screen press R. This will start the Recovery Console. You will see a
black screen informing you about the Recovery Console. It will likely look
like this

1: C:\Windows
Which Windows installation would you like to log onto
(To cancel, press Enter)?

at that point press the 1 key and press Enter. You should next see the
following line
Type the Administrator password:

at that point just press the Enter key to leave it blank. You should next
see the following line
C:\Windows>

Type the following and press the Enter key
DISKPART

This will launch the partition manager. Just press the D key and press
Enter. That will Delete the partition that houses XP and it will be gone. It
only takes a couple of seconds. When finished remove the XP CD from the
drive and type EXIT to reboot.At that point XP is gone. You will need to
repartition the drive and reformat it in order to install anything on it.
Refer to the installation instructions for whatever OS you want to install
or partitioning and formatting instructions for a new drive if you plan to
use it for storage. (google search will get you plenty of info on how to do
that)

If the XP CD you have is damaged and you can't access the Recovery Console
you can use a number of partition management tools to delete the current
partition. If you have access to a computer with a CD burner download this
file www.webtree.ca\windowsxp\Tools\bootdiscs\xp_rec_con.zip and burn the
enclosed .iso file to a blank CD ( don't know how to correctly burn an iso
then go here http://iso.snoekonline.com/iso.htm ) . Boot with the resulting
CD and use the instructions above to run DISKPART.

Finally as a point of "tech speak" please use the term "download" to refer
to acquiring files from the internet. In other words you download files from
the internet and save them on your computer's hard drive. This is not
installing a program it is simply copying a file from one location to
another. Novices often think that to download means to install and that is
confusing to us techie types. :-)

A pirated version of XP will not pass the Windows Genuine Product Activation
test. Microsoft files like Windows Updates and other Microsoft files will
not download. However a pirated version of XP will allow you to download and
install files from sources other than Microsoft. So, once again, just
because your copy of XP doesn't download files doesn't make it a pirated
copy.
 
Simply install new xp cd,boot to xp cd,press r For recovery at boot menu
screen,press enter for password,select 1 For C: Then type:DiskPart In
diskPart,
delete all partitions,create one,press ESC key,type:EXIT Reboot to xp
cd,install
xp.
 
New here, so I apologize if I am not speaking tech very clearly. It must be
very annoying to those of you who know what you are doing to hear requests
such as this.
Click to expand...

Don't worry - You're not the only one. I just started posting on this
"usenet interface" aswell.
I (innocently-stupidly, but innocently) bought a pirated copy of xp home
edition . No wonder the guy was so nice about installing it for me on my old
pc. Then I downloaded this same cd onto another pc when my old pc the guy
installed it on went belly up. Anyway, part of the features do not work.
Including add/remove. Only beeps. Went into H-KEYS to unistall. No unsinstall
option on H-KEYS. (I learned about this from another techie site). Will not
accept a command prompt because it says it is not activated. Of course I
cannot activate it. Not sure how the guy who installed it activated it
because it worked great on that computer. It also will not allow me to
download a single thing. That is how I began to realize something was wrong.
Now it is just a big mess.
Click to expand...

CONGRATULATIONS! You just installed ungenuine Windows.

I understand you didn't know that you were installing an ungenuine copy of
Windows XP. It is a problem that Microsoft is *trying* to fix.

Can you boot in Safe Mode?

To do this, start your computer, and before the XP logo appears (if it
actually exists on the copy of XP), repeatedly tap the F8 key. You should see
the advanced startup options menu. Use the arrow keys to choose 'Safe Mode'.

If you can boot into Safe Mode, please reply.

If not, there is always the MS-DOS mode - You can be sure to delete all XP
files there...
 
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