CLA Nominee: Laptop Doesn’t Boot

This actually happened earier this spring, but it is to worthy to not recieve a Computer Literacy Award nomination.  I was at work sitting at my desk working on something when a student at the school I was at walks into the Technology Office.  They hand me a laptop and tell me their teacher asked them to bring it to me because everytime they turn it on they cannot get passed this screen.

So I take the laptop and look at the screen… it is in the middle of the Microsoft Windows XP installation process asking for the product key…  WHAT?!?  It was at this point that I told the student that I would take the laptop and to let their teacher know I would email them and let them know what needed to be done.

So I check the CD drive and it appears that the last time this laptop was in for repair, the tech accidentally left the Windows XP cd in the drive.  Which normally wouldn’t have been a big deal and it would have been returned to us when it was discovered by the teacher.  Well, I am guessing that during the boot process they must have either on accident or on purpose (I didn’t inquire much details from the teacher as I wasn’t sure I could do it without laughing or asking they what they were thinking) press any key to boot from cd when propted during boot.

Again, the laptop was at the point of wanting a product key, which means at this point they had already went through the process of telling setup they wanted a fresh copy of Windows XP and formatted the hard drive.  Now I am not a rocket scientist, but I would think that at the point the computer boots and says any thing remotely close to “Install Windows XP” on the screen and not booting like normal that it would be cause for questioning and maybe a phone call to tech.  Nope, I guess not because I double checked and the hard drive had been formatted during the install and was not just running through repair mode or anything, which means at some point, someone said yes to “Are you sure?  This will ERASE all data on this partition.”

All was well in the end.  I finished installing Windows and the other needed software and the laptop was returned to the teacher again.  Without a Windows disc in the drive this time.  At least the day was eventful, right?