I have a premade Sony Vaio machine (recent, last year or two) that came with Windows Media Center pre-loaded on it.
I’m going to be using the computer, but i don’t like Windows Media Center, so i’m trying to install a copy of Windows XP Professional on the machine.
The Windows XP Pro CD is an OEM that has been successfully installed on a laptop with no internet connection.
When i boot from the CD, it goes through the setup process fine until it gets to the partition screen. It doesn’t display the partitions, and it doesn’t respond to any kind of interaction, including moving up and down the list of non-partitions. When you try to hit enter, it Blue Screens with the following error:
Stop: 0x0000008E (0xc0000005, 0x8081a799, 0xF6FD2778, 0x00000000)
Windows Media center also has a wizard that theoretically lets you upgrade windows media center to XP while the OS is running.
I’ve tried running the XP Pro cd this way. It sets up fine until it gets to the serial number section. At the serial number screen, it tells me that the serial number is incorrect (its not – i’ve doubled checked the number twice, and my coworker has doubled checked it twice, and it worked before on the laptop. The laptop never connected to the internet either, so its not an activation thing).
It also says that i’m allowed to skip the step until later, but it doesn’t let me skip.
Any ideas?
