Solved Clearing old XP

[ICIT2LOL]

I have a friend who has bought an old XP machine form the education department and we cannot get rid of the boot up process > agreement . ID + password > them departments' desktop logo or whatever you call it.

Can someone give us an idea on how to get rid of this rot and just have it start normally in Windows.

Or have we got to format it and try and get a copy of XP which I guess will be nigh impossible. The machine dates from 2005 and is really just for the kids to play around on.

 

[Britton30]

The only thing I can suggest is to ask the folks it was bought from for the info. I think you'd need the password to create a Password reset disk.
Is it the system BIOS that has a password?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok

Sorry Britton I don't know what the go is with the BIOS I just see it start with an agreement screen > Enter > ID > already there) > password and then to the Department of Education screen with the stuff I have added to it.

I suppose it's a small thing but just annoying that you hae to go through that process.

Anyway my friend is going to ask the school principal next week what the go is as I would have thought that they would have cleaned the machines before selling them on as most go overseas for whatever. Anyway my mate is disabled and can't afford to have the HDD formatted and buy another XP disk - if you could even so Ill just put on some apps for him MSE (no security on) , CC, MBAM, Defraggler, and enable the firewall as none of this has ever been done and rip out the 2003 Works and put my 2007 Works in for him at least it's reasonably usable eh??

It was quite an experience to clean that much dust out of a machine - enough to fill the air intakes and the CPU cooling fins were solid - how it didn't catch fire is beyond me. Anyway we'll see what this principle has to say at least it's cleaner and running faster than before - nearly 900MB of rubbish and the reg was full of unused items - such a mess. But if he can put up with that screen it's usable.

Hey but thanks for your reply I'll have a look at what it has in the way of BIOS after some tea - your help much appreciated you're a gentleman and a scholar!!.

 

[vaidas3]

I think it should be ok to do clean reinstall of windows xp with same license, of course you will need media (that match, please dont forget that not only home and pro is different but for windows xp oem and vl media is different) and cd key if its an oem there should be sticker on the pc.
if the bios is custom made then there could be a problem

 

[wysiwyg]

Easiest way is replace the HDD, save a lot of messing about.

 

[alphanumeric]

Have a look at the boot.ini file. Look for > /bootlogo /noguiboot < at the end of
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
If those two switches are there you won't see the normal windows XP boot screen, instead you it will display the BOOT.bmp file. The boot.ini is a hidden file in the root of the active partition. BOOT.bmp would be in the Windows folder. I'm not sure this is what they did but its easy enough to check. BOOT.bmp would be the logo you see on bootup. Just remove the /bootlogo and /noguiboot. The boot.ini can be opened and edited in notepad. The agreement window/box was likely set with the group policy editor, gpedit.msc. If I have time latter on today I'll fire up my XP box and see if I can find it in gpedit.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok

Have a look at the boot.ini file. Look for > /bootlogo /noguiboot < at the end of
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
If those two switches are there you won't see the normal windows XP boot screen, instead you it will display the BOOT.bmp file. The boot.ini is a hidden file in the root of the active partition. BOOT.bmp would be in the Windows folder. I'm not sure this is what they did but its easy enough to check. BOOT.bmp would be the logo you see on bootup. Just remove the /bootlogo and /noguiboot. The boot.ini can be opened and edited in notepad. The agreement window/box was likely set with the group policy editor, gpedit.msc. If I have time latter on today I'll fire up my XP box and see if I can find it in gpedit.

Thanks apha am a complete no brainer when it comes to reg stuff - thing is it starts with the normal Windows XP screen then goes off into the department windows. But I'll have a look anyway.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Alpha

I have it up now the notepad reads in Save a Back Up copy of Boot.ini > inder "Start Up and Recovery" > System Startup click Edit pas:-

[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition1\WINDOWS="Microsoft windows XP Professional" =nexecute=o


In the small window it states in default operating systems

"Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

This is just a bit of what I can see am I in the right spot??

 

[alphanumeric]

OK, if you see the normal Windows XP boot screen they didn't edit the boot.ini file. What they probably did was turn off the welcome screen. When you do that it displays a background image. The image that is displayed is stored in the registry under [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop], look for the Wallpaper key. The entry on the right will be the background and its location. It will be something like C:\Windows\ xxxx.bmp If this is what they did turning the welcome screen back on should get ride of it. Another option is to edit the reg key and change it to a wallpaper you want to see instead. The option to turn the welcome screen back on should be in user accounts in control panel.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

OK

Ok alpha I'll try that and see what happens

 

[Britton30]

how's it going there?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hiyya B

Hiyya Britton
Sorry late reply B. Not too bad at the moment mate have got got a few options one being sticking a new HDD in and loading the OS on that and start from scratch.

Have found the old drive is a 3Gbs SATA and I just happen to have a spare 500GB Seagate Barracuda here and thought I might just try that first. Worst comes to the worst I can stick the old drive back in.

I think this solution sounds the simplest way to me as the other options of "refurbishing" the old drive seem rather complicated - to me anyway. Probably a savvy person or tech could do it in no time at all but I am only enough savvy to find my way around simple stuff at the moment.

 

[alphanumeric]

If you are going to re-install (clean install) it doesn't matter what drive is in there. In XP you will get the option to delete, create, and format the partitions/drives. If you want you could just leave the current drive in there, delete the partition, create a new one and format it. You don't even have to delete it if you don't want to, just format it to erase the old XP install.

 

[Britton30]

Sounds like a good plan there John.

 

[alphanumeric]

lol, I just resurrected my old XP rig. It had been acting weird and crashing on me. Even doing a re-install it would just lock up at a certain point every time. I had decided to strip it for parts and chuck the motherboard which I was sure was bad. When I tested the BIOS battery it was way low. I was skeptical that that could cause all the problems I had, but I had nothing better to do and put it all back together with a new battery. So far so good, I'm just finishing up my clean install and installing my apps, etc. I've only been running it for a couple of hours or so but it seems stable.

 

[Britton30]

Yup a bad CMOS battery can mess you up.

 

[alphanumeric]

The thing of it was though, it wasn't loosing any BIOS settings and the date and time was OK even after being off for a while. Live and learn though, I'll not soon forget it, and it will be one of the things to look at on my trouble shooting check list.

 

[Britton30]

Could be that it had accumulated dirt on the connections and removing it sorta cleaned it. Batteries develop that greenish corrosion at times.

 

[alphanumeric]

No it was low, I checked it in a battery tester. I put another one that tested in the green and all appears OK now.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Well so far so...

Well the new Seagate 500GB worked a treat (already formatted and partitioned 10GB) installed the XP - graphics better than ever but a downer with connecting with the net as I don't know just how to set it up.

The machine has two ethernet connections - the mobo one and a D-Link adapter card. Have been using the card on account of the previous set up (mobo socket no go). Now no go on either - I know because it needs setting up.

Problem is how to set the card adapter to accept any form of connection as I am on cable here through my ISP and my mate is having satellite put on and use a dongle if the sat connection fails.

Now if I can get the connection going I might even try the other alternative and that is to format the old drive and install onto it and get to keep my 500GB. Not that I am being stingy but it was meant for a small build that I am planning.