Per the OP title I’m cleaning out the old software closet at work and putting salable packages on ebay. I have 5 sealed copies of the MS Windows XP Pro OS with the CD. There are no MS license key stickers on the CDs. In multiple PC corporate purchase installations MS makes the manufacturer put the license key is on a sticker on the bottom of the PC (a Dell in this case) .
We dumped most of these vintage PCs long ago and have one left with a license key sticker. Can I sell these packages individually on ebay and give out the key off the remaining PC as the license key for each of them? Will buyers run into a problem or not?
If the license was for 5 copies, yes. If the licenses were individual, no. Discs and so forth are not the salable product, as you clearly recognize - AFAIK, Microsoft will send you pretty much any OS disc you request for a small fee and some vague proof you have a license.
Would anyone including MS care, at this point? I doubt it. Nor would any buyers, since XP discs and license codes are essentially freeware these days. I’d bet any license code would allow dozens of installations and technical validation with MS before even a bot noticed.
But I know, I know. I have sealed copies of Win 95, Win 98 and possibly Win2K around here. What to do with them?
It’s unclear from this description whether these are OEM licenses (which I suspect they are – and there would be a different key for each machine) or a single corporate Volume License Key (VLK). But for sure it isn’t a regular retail version, and those are supposed to be the only ones you could legally transfer/resell.
As noted, I doubt that MS cares any more, and by the same token the OS probably has little value. A VLK version of XP Pro will certainly install with a volume key and won’t require activation. A Dell OEM version may not activate at all if MS is still enforcing the rules.
Odds are, if they came with the PC, they are OEM. OEM licenses cannot be re-sold for other machines, they are intended to be used with only the machine they were sold with. If they’re retail, sold separately, anyone can install anywhere.
Also, the install only works for the right kind of install disk, with XP. An OEM key will not, as far as I remember, activate a retail or MOLP install media and vice versa. (Which caused so many problems they have since changed this with newer versions of Windows, IIRC).
Dell XP systems (unless they were per-customer custom image installs) all used the same product key for preinstalled Windows. There was some “magic” between the Dell BIOS and the Windows license verification (which continues in modified form on newer Windows versions today).
The product key stickers on the systems were for re-installation using the provided media. They are standard single-use OEM keys / media and go through normal Microsoft license validation.
I suspect that if you (or your customers) attempted to do multiple installs with the same key, XP would install (it doesn’t “phone home” during installation, but only checks that the key is in the valid format) but that the first time you ran Windows Update, it would insist on downloading WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) and complain that all but the first install were done with a pirated key. WGA won’t think that they key has been used for the first install because as I mentioned above, Dell didn’t use it when they installed Windows on the system it came from.
That’s the technical side. I don’t know if Microsoft / eBay / whoever still cares about the sale of OEM media/keys for XP, but it is still technically a violation of the license.