You know you've installed Windows too many times...

[Steve]

When you can do it entirely in Swedish, without speaking a word of Swedish.

A friend (Swedish, obviously) came to me last week asking for assistance with their laptop. She said it wouldn't boot. I was hoping it'd be an easy fix, so I went to sort it out. It quickly transpired (chkdsk took 30 minutes to get to 3% complete... and this WASN'T a surface scan) that the hard drive was McBroken.

Seatools confirmed this, finding hundreds of dodgy sectors. Cut a long story short, I took the laptop away with me and ran the flaming awesome Damn Small Linux on it. I recovered to a USB hard drive the folders I'd been instructed to, prior to trying to fix the drive with Seatools.

Got 99% of of the files wanted (took a LONG time though), but Seatools couldn't fix it.

Yay, new drive time! Doubled the capacity in the process, but also had to install Windows XP, in Swedish. As you'd expect, all the buttons are in the same place, so if you've done it quite a few times before, it's a piece of cake, save the keyboard, because the crazy Swedish people have certain special character keys in different places.

Still, at least it works. I just hope the hard drive doesn't die on the laptop of any Chinese friends...

[Steve B]

just thank god it wasn't in click language, then you'd have to get your microphone out

[5lab]

nar, the gold test is if you know the cd code off by heart..

FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-......


i still know win98 se as well :|

[dave87]

I know the office cd key off by heart which is quite shocking, but XP I've done with so many different keys that I cant remember any of them (all legitimate installs, bulk buying & installing XP is NOT fun)

[Steve]

111-111111

[Rys]

111-111111

Ah, the code for Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise

[directhex]

i've lost my ubuntu cd key

[Steve]

Ah, the code for Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise

Code for anything that used that 'key' system, wasn't it?

[ukengineer]

When i was on the road, I had to do a windows install in Arabic or something like that, it wasnt until he pointed out, everything was from right to left, did i get the install finished, SHOCKING STUFF...

[Howard]

nar, the gold test is if you know the cd code off by heart..

FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-......

8TG6W-2B7Q8

[5lab]

almost as if your version of windows isn't legit

[Funkstar]

Sweedish is probably quite similar to Norwegian. I have to use Outlook Web Access in Norwegian when i am there as Exchange picks up the language from windows. I've also helped some of the guys out when they have been truing to do things in Hotmail (which i've never used myself). 'Kontact' is a dead give away however