Egil Hansen

I had to reinstall my laptop the other day and since the only Windows XP CD I could find at work was one with SP1, I just installed that thinking it would be a smooth ride upgrading to SP2 once I had it up and running.

As you have probably guessed it didn’t go as planed. Every time I started the SP2 installation, it would get stuck when it reached “Checking Product Key”. After some googling I stumbled across the following solution mailed to another unlucky guy by Microsoft Support, which thankfully worked for me as well.

Fix for Service Pack 2 installation stuck at “Checking Product Key”

1. Please go into the CMD prompt (Start/Run –> cmd.exe)
2. Then type cd /d %windir%\inf and make sure we are in that directory.
3. Then type ren oem*.inf oem*.old, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (do not worry about it).
4. Then type ren oem*.pnf oem*.old1, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (Do not worry about it).
5. Then goto Start/Run and type "%windir%\inf" and you will see the files in the folder.
6. Then find the file by name INFCACHE.1 and move it to the desktop (or another place outside the Windows folder) from c:\windows\inf.
7. Close all windows and reboot the computer to safe mode and start the installation of SP2 and it should go fine.

Microsoft, you owe me three hours…

Update: I originally forgot to mention why this happens. When SP2 tries to validate your Windows key using the infamous Windows Genuine Advantage, it can fail if OEM drivers have been installed. So to avoid this problem completely, simply upgrade to SP2 right away after the initial installation of Windows.

After thinking about getting a web log for a long time (I even started coding one my self a few times), I decided to take the easy road and just do the “Famous 5-Minute Install” of WordPress, pick a theme that seemed reasonable and be done with it. Of course I couldn’t resist spicing things up a little so I cropped one of my favorite background images and put it up in the header and moved the text there around a bit as well. I’ll probably keep playing around with the layout and styling when I have the time – I might even do a complete theme myself one day if time allows.

So what can you expect on this site. You can expect to read my rants on everything I think I have something (intelligent) to rant about, I’ll probably post more or less useful tips about things – most often topics related to programming or computers in general, and maybe even an article once in a while that goes deeper in to a topic or present something I have created that I want to share or just get feedback on.

So enjoy your stay and welcome to Egil.dk.