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    Reinstalling XP Media Center with an XP Pro recovery disc: possible?

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by billtron, Sep 19, 2008.

  1. billtron

    billtron Notebook Enthusiast

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    I have an M140 with XP Media Center Edition v2002 SP2 installed and I want to wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows. Unfortunately, the computer did not come with a recovery disc. I do have an XP Home recovery disc and an XP Pro recovery disc, however, and I have all of the drivers necessary already downloaded onto a flash drive.

    Is it possible to reinstall windows using the product key from the M140 and one of the other recovery discs, or do I have to request an XP Media Center recovery disc from dell and wait for it to arrive in the mail?
     
    billtron, Sep 19, 2008
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  2. billtron

    billtron Notebook Enthusiast

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    After doing more research, it seems that my computer might possibly have a hidden recovery partition that I can access by pressing ctrl-F11 at bootup. Can I erase the windows partition then restore using this recovery partition, or should I just boot to the recovery partition without wiping the windows partition?

    I have already backed up all valuable data, by the way.
     
    billtron, Sep 19, 2008
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  3. atbnet

    atbnet Notebook Prophet

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    You can't use the XP Pro CD because MCE is XP Pro and the media addons. You can delete the data off of your Windows partition and then use the recovery to rebuild the Windows install, just make sure you don't wipe the entire disc.
     
    atbnet, Sep 19, 2008
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  4. billtron

    billtron Notebook Enthusiast

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    atbnet, thanks for the advice. I used the recovery partition without erasing the drive, and everything is working as I hoped. And in a few days some support discs will arrive in the mail from dell.
     
    billtron, Sep 19, 2008
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  5. atbnet

    atbnet Notebook Prophet

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    That's good. I didn't know if you had a virus or something that you wanted to wipe clean off the Windows partition first. Glad it worked out well.
     
    atbnet, Sep 19, 2008
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