Aspire 5672 Windows problem

I am working on my brother's Aspire 5672. He had to shut it down when some nasty malware started poping windows open faster than he could shut them down. After he did this the system would no longer boot.

I was able to take care of the problems and it now boots fine and is clear of malware.

The problem is that in the process of fixing that problem some windows xp home files were damaged making any networking attempts error out. Everything else is working fine.

He has a factory restore disk, however I don't want to restore it back to xp home sp 1, and then reinstall all the updates.
, programs, and data.

So I booted from a Windows XP home edition upgrade version disk I had and ran the repair install. It paused a few times asking about some drivers that weren't Microsoft certified other than that installed just fine and ended up at the product key window.

I entered the product key from label on the bottom of his laptop and it said it wasn't a valid Key???? I checked and rechecked that it was entered correctly.

So now I'm stuck on the product key window and there dosn't appear to be a way to back out.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Don

 

the upgrade key is different than the COA located on the bottom of the 5672. This will not work....

You have 2 options (perhaps 3)

#1. use the D2D partition to go back to Home + SP1 and update the system from there

#2. Locate a Windows XP Home OEM disk and run a repair install with that software

#3. Live with the current install...

personally I choose #1, just bite the bullet and back the data up onto a separate HDD, restore the image and put SP3 + updates on it.

 

exactly what ssx said there are some ways around this but its of questionable legality