hey guys, i was going to reformat and reinstall XP on erics laptop cause it was acting all stupid. so i did all the normal steps and then when i am putting the XP disk in it says that it doesnt meet the EULA and then says it is going to reboot.


its just a simple Dell Inspirion, nothing special. is there a way to bypass that or work around it


i have an earlier version of the same computer and had no problems re installing XP on it...

 

ive never seen that before and not sure what it is

did you use the rescue cds? or just a windows disk?

try doin a hard format again and reinstalling

 

i have reformatted it countless times and quick formatted it on top of it. everytime i go to install the clean XP disk it goes through about 5 steps and then gives me that error and reboots itself. i even tried to put on Win ME and then upgrade it and it wouldnt fully install ME, kept stalling 10 mins before the setup completed

 

weird

it might be a bad hd. could have a bad sector.

 

I think you should use a program "Active Kill Disk" found at http://www.killdisk.com/. I run that program everytime I reformat the computer. Read the webpage and its pretty straight forward. Good luck!

 

cool i will do that right now!!! thanks for the help, i will let you know if it works...

 

is not meeting the EULA or HCL?

Is the windows XP cd a retail cd or an oem cd from dell?

 

i ran the killdisk and i think that it is working, i am reformatting it again after and i will update.


it was saying that i was not meeting the EULA end user licence agreement

 

yeh thats wierd

your win xp disk might be currupt.
it could have a scratch on it or something.

on a side note jeremy are you goin to be orlando tomorrow??
i could maybe meet up with you and grab that guage??
i got the rt cats gutted today and a 02 bung. was goin to try to get the bung welded on and put them on this week.
let me know and i can paypal you the money and pick it up tomorrow

thanks

 

i have to work all day, i will be home around 6 probably


ok, during setup it gets to a certain point and says it cant find the EULA

 

Hopefully the program works out right. In theory, it should restore the hd to "brand new" like you just bought it from the store condition.

 

if it is flaking out on the eula then the cd is scrathed or busted up or maybe the cd rive cant read it. Try doing a cd drive swap just for the install.

The other possibility is that they have it coded to check the machine config and is failing the install becasue it does not se then appropriate oem hardware for that that cd was distributed with. Essentialy they can marry the cd to a particular bios or hardware config.

 

What kind of CD is it? Retail, OEM, branded, or pirate? If it is a Dell branded CD it should work fine in your Inspiron.

If it is a legitimate disk, you might try and clean it.

 

well its not a dell cd and its not a store bought cd, but it has worked many times with my same exact laptop and also on my desktop. maybe i will buy a usb cd drive that might be able to read it with his laptop. the disk looks perfect and i always take really good care of it so it wont have any fingerprints or scratches.

kinda sucks cause i told him i would fix it really quick and now i am kinda stuck with it...

thanks guys, the killdisk didnt work. i dont really understand it. i would think that EVERYTHING would be erased off the HD and that the bios wouldnt have any control over reading the EULA....

hmm....

 

Well after running the killdisk program, and if the program ran successfully, I would have to conclude that it is possible that your cd or drive is having issues. You've tried everything else, so whats a few more attempts right? In this situation, I would make a copy of your install cd and use a program to verify the burn. I use Blindwrite to make 1:1 copies of my cds/dvds. Also, you can try and use something like isobuster to extract all files off of the cd and burn it to another cd. Same principle basically. Other than that, I would be tempted to lay the laptop on the ground and roll over it with my car Good luck!