Drivers

If you have ever reinstalled a Windows PC you will know the scenario. Windows is installed, but certain devices aren't working yet because you can't find the right drivers for them.

First, look in the Device Manager and find the device which is not installed. Right-click on this, and select Properties, then Details. The "Hardware Ids" will allow you to establish the Vendor code (VEN_) and the Device code (DEV_).

Look these up in www.pcidatabase.com and you will find out the manufacturer and device names.

Go to the manufacturer's website and search for the driver for the device that you located above - remembering that it is probably operating system version specific!

The websites that offer to find and supply the driver for you are generally useless - the will want to charge you, enroll you or fill your PC up with malware (or all these things!).

Windows 8 trap

I you have a newish Windows PC it probably has Windows 8 installed on it. And when it was new, you probably saw messages about creating recovery media, and about doing backups. Keen to get started, you probably dismissed these as quickly as possible.

But watch out. When Windows is installed a Product Code is needed to activate it. If your machine needs to be reinstalled, this code will be needed. It's not written down anywhere, just stored in an encrypted form on the disk. If the disk fails, the code has gone...and if you didn't generate the recovery disks then there will be no option but to buy a new copy of Windows for around £80!

Older versions of Windows always carried a paper sticker with the code on it

Windows Activation saga!

Reinstalling a Windows machine is normally a reasonably predictable job. The reinstall is quick, then you have to apply service packs, then you spend quite a while allowing the machine to do Windows updates. You hardly notice that the Windows product key has to be applied to the installation.

If you're in luck, the required key is on a Microsoft sticker applied to the machine - but it is always a good idea to use a utility like Produkey to get a record of the product key before starting a reinstall.

Sometimes things aren't quite so smooth though, as my last machine highlights...

(1) Machine won't boot. Nor will it boot into the manufacturer's recovery partition.
(2) Booting from a Windows 7 install DVD and attempting recovery from there fails.
(3) There is no way forward but to reinstall the machine.
(4) First the user's data must be backed up - remove the disk and access it from another machine.
(5) Because permissions have to be reset on each file, and the user has a very large number of data files, this proves impossibly slow.
(6) Back to booting from the Windows install DVD, then going to the command prompt option, connecting an external disk and using xcopy with a few suitable commend-line options to copy the user files to the disk.
(7) Copy the file which contains the product code (C:\Windows\System 32\config\software) to the disk and access it from a Windows XP machine to allow the product key currently in use to be recorded with Produkey. This key does not match the key on the Microsoft sticker.
(8) Then attempt to reinstall Windows. It can see the disk, but fails to install to it, even when the advanced options are used to remove existing partitions etc.
(9) Replace the disk with a used one.

(10) This disk is already installed with the same version of Windows, so attempt to use it - but Windows is not activated, and the activation fails using the product key that it used to have.
(11) Activation also fails using the product key from the old disk.
(12) Phone activation fails - this involves making a long call to Miscrosoft and typing in a 54-digit number and receiving a different one back.
(13) Speaking to a real person from Microsoft leads to the conclusion that the code is counterfeit or blocked for some reason.
(14) Reinstalling Windows to this disk leads to the same activation problem - but this time the phone option is not presented..
(15) Running the command cscript.exe "slmgr.vbs" -dlv > %userprofile%\desktop\act.txt gives a text file that contains the 54 digits required for phone activation. 
(16) c:\windows\system32\sppui\phone.inf lists the required phone number.
(17) But again the code is rejected as blocked.
(18) Note the code on the product key sticker. This is so worn that it is almost unreadable. Using a strong light, a magnifying glass and a bit of guesswork, get the code.
(19) This code succesfully activates Windows!