I would bet that WinXP's restore process hides in that extra partition. Take
a look in there for a folder named "i386" (without the quotes, of course),
and that should be what the doctor ordered. Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq, and a
few other vendors use that kind of setup method, rather than providing CD's
that need packaging, etcetera. Each manufacturer has a different method for
using the restore functions buried in that FAT32 partition, so you may want
to check any manuals that shipped with your system or eMachine's website for
help with that.

-----Original Message-----
From: Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of JJ
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 10:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] Product Key Not Product Key - What to do


System - eMachine T1100
XP Home

Working on for acquaintance. Once machine booted clicking on any user
account resulted in machine rebooting. Had some other issues as well. No
restore CDs came with machine. Decided to just reformat and resinstall XP
Home from a CD I had using the KEY on the sticker on back of machine.  When
I put in the "product key" as listed on the machine I get an "Invalid Key"
response.  Doing some net searching I found a reference to the fact that
eMachines evidently put the activation key on the sticker not the product
key. Oops. Well, the c:\ has been formatted so trying to retrieve what the
actual key was is a moot point on c:\. Not real familiar with eMachines but
there is a second partition on the drive that's FAT32 and appears to have
something on it. Is this a restore function? If so how do you access\run the
restore?

Thanks in advance

Jayne Johnston
[log in to unmask]

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