Coa

Just tried to reload a computer I bought about 10 years ago. After formatting and loading, the Windows 95 ops system needs a COA which I no longer can locate. What are my options? Oh yea, this is an OEM cd and most likely holds all the drivers and whatnot. Please Help.

 

Options

Is there anything left on the computer's hard drive?

If you can get Windows started (even if only in SAFE MODE), right-click on MY COMPUTER, then left-click on PROPERTIES. The C-of-A number is shown on the first panel that comes up.

If you CAN'T get Windows started, you can extract the C-of-A from the SYSTEM.1ST file using DOS. At the DOS prompt, type "EDIT C:\SYSTEM.1ST ", and press ENTER. Use SEARCH to find "-OEM-" or "PRODUCTID ". There's your C-of-A.

(I stole this absolutely brilliant DOS tip from Gerry Kroll.)

If the hard drive is blank, you may be SOL -- I've never heard any reports of being able to extract the C-of-A from the installation CD.

Jerry

 

Ripped off from this page. I believe it is in keeping with the forum rules .
You will need to copy all the Windows installation files to your hard drive first. Then in the same folder you copied the files to create a new file Msbatch.inf. Add the following:

[Setup]
ProductType=1
(press Enter)
(press Enter)

Save the file and install Windows.

When Windows has completed installing go to the Registry Key in RegEdit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE|Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion and get the value of the Data "ProductKey ", for Windows 95, it will be "ProductID ". Save the information, this is your Windows CD Key.

To copy the setup files in dos, after booting with a floppy that give you CD rom support, and you are looking at A:\>.
c:
md\win95
copy X:\win95\*.* c:\win95 X being the drive letter for the CD drive
To create the file you need in dos, after you do the first command, you will not see the prompt, just a blinking cursor. This will take what you type in and make the file.
copy con c:\win95\msbatch.inf <press Enter>
[Setup] <press Enter>
ProductType=1 <press Enter>
<press Enter>
<press Enter>
Then CTRL+Z, and you will get the message 1 file copied.
Then type in this command to install windows,
c:\win95\setup.exe

If the floppy you have does not give you CD rom support, go to Bootdisk's, get the one for 98SE OEM, double click the downloaded file with a floppy in the drive and it will be created for you. This will work for what you need to do.