get original oem product key for Acer Aspire 5050 ? Or do I even need it…..

curiouswebs

My question, is it possible to get original oem product key for Acer Aspire 5050 ? Or do I even need it…..

According to the Acer site with the laptop SN# It should have Vista home premium Acer Aspire 5050 - *****

I just installed a new power port plug board, booted and XP sp3 is installed

The hard drive is a mess… I do not see in management any partition, only C drive.

there is no restore software or option to burn backup.

I DO HAVE Acer 2 cd set recovery pn RDAG300.077 and op system cdsPN SD AG300.002 for this pc from ACER

I installed a small program to read prod keys and only xp and 3rd party key shows

On C drive I do see hidden older win/acer folders and files If I boot to recovery cd laptop hangs for a minute then boots to hard drive starting xp

The original vista oem coa label is so destroyed I cannot read. It looks like some or most of Acer bundled software is installed with the XP op system

Any help or guidance is appreciated

[edited for privacy]

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finlux

Hi curiouswebs!

It seems as if the laptop was downgraded from Vista to XP (or upgraded, depends on your point of view Smiley Very Happy )

If the Acer 2 CD set are the original recovery disks, then you do not need the OEM product key, as it will be preinstalled & activated.

If the XP installed is not important to you, try the disks anyway. Just remember to do a full install of Vista.

curiouswebs

Thank you for the response

What I have done..

I did insert the op system cd which booted, started a program, asked for recovery cd which I inserted, it then installed system files and then asked again for op system cd. Xp sp2 was installed however, It never gave me a choice for operating systems, never asked for opportunity to create partition, did not create a partition, never asked for xp or any key, and when new install booted up while finishing processes a window popped in read “ looking for solution for e recovery” re booted and e-recovery was not installed.

So, perhaps I have to create my own partition?

Maybe the recovery cd’s are for XP Only?

Maybe the Acer site has incorrect info on my serial number for this PC and it did come with XP?

More questions than answers, that’s why I was curious if I can get the original oem reg key for this PC. Seems to me when they were transitioning to Vista, the key generated which install and it/vista as an upgrade during install. But I don’t remember as I haven’t messed with Acer much..

Oh one more thing, it will not allow me to shrink C: drive to create a partition, option shaded out, so I guess I will have to dig out another Retail xp cd to re format and create a partition?

Thanks again…

finlux

You may well be right!

Don't forget, you can only create 4 partitions, so that may be why it is greyed out. You could also try a free partition manager program like Paragon or EaseUS.

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