Long story short, over the weekend I installed some new RAM and it didn't work. The system would beep a bunch of times and I'd get a black screen. I powered down and back on a few timesm pressing the F10 and Esc (and Delete and F2 and who knows what else) hoping to get into the BIOS. I pulled the new RAM and installed the old RAM. I powered up and got a blank screen a few more times. I removed the video card and plugged in the RGB to the integrated graphics and the system booted up and said "Activate Windows", like it did, years ago when I first bought it.
I tried 'system restore' to 12/15/22 and while it did it's thing, I went to bed. I woke up and it said there was an error and it couldn't/didn't restore (and the 12/15/22 restore is gone).
The only restore left was from yesterday, after all the hell had broken loose, but it said "undo" so I ran it, thinking it would undo and put me back to before the RAM install fiasco. This morning, it said there was an error doing the restore and it hadn't restored.
It appears to have reset to factory defaults. I tried some programs and many aren't working. I tried an old game (Red Baron 3d) and it ran, so I tried to record it and it recorded. But when I try to play the recording, it tells me the codec doesn't exist. My NIC wasn't working, saying it couldn't find the driver, but I managed to load one from a thumb drive and can now get on the internet.
NR2003 runs (Delta server is up for testing, BTW) but AC Content Manger is telling me -
I think my activation key is with my mic, in storage, in a box, somewhere I can't find. So....
Is everything not going to work until I find that activation key? Does windows activation disable all my stuff, like the video card, until I do the activation thing again?
Have I ever expressed just how much I hate Bill Gates?
Any help is appreciated.
I tried 'system restore' to 12/15/22 and while it did it's thing, I went to bed. I woke up and it said there was an error and it couldn't/didn't restore (and the 12/15/22 restore is gone).
The only restore left was from yesterday, after all the hell had broken loose, but it said "undo" so I ran it, thinking it would undo and put me back to before the RAM install fiasco. This morning, it said there was an error doing the restore and it hadn't restored.
It appears to have reset to factory defaults. I tried some programs and many aren't working. I tried an old game (Red Baron 3d) and it ran, so I tried to record it and it recorded. But when I try to play the recording, it tells me the codec doesn't exist. My NIC wasn't working, saying it couldn't find the driver, but I managed to load one from a thumb drive and can now get on the internet.
NR2003 runs (Delta server is up for testing, BTW) but AC Content Manger is telling me -
I think my activation key is with my mic, in storage, in a box, somewhere I can't find. So....
Is everything not going to work until I find that activation key? Does windows activation disable all my stuff, like the video card, until I do the activation thing again?
Have I ever expressed just how much I hate Bill Gates?
Any help is appreciated.