I have three PC’s running Windows XP Professional, all with valid licenses, but no usable XP discs (my 5 year old daughter got ahold of my discs.) One PC I wiped before finding out my discs were ruined.
So, what’s the cheapest way to get a replacement disc? Can I copy it off one of my working machines? I’m self taught about computers and I have glaring holes in my knowledge.
Thanks in advance - DESK
I doubt it…you have to activate WXP with Microsoft in less than 30 days after installing it, and also if you do more than 4 “major” hardware changes in less than 90 days.
Do you still have the ruined CDs? You may be able to obtain replacement media from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326246/
If your system came with an OEM installation of Windows XP, you’ll need to contact the manufacturer instead.
Where you obtain your media is of little concern to MS. The key is what matters.
When I reinstalled the software for a friend’s Dell, I had major problem. No Dell OEM disk to reinstall from. The copy of XP had been in a partition on the hard drive and the hard drive had given up the ghost. So no chance of getting XP back. Dell’s support site is beautiful and well-organized and is also a total dead end if you’re trying to reinstall XP without your OEM partition.
My own fully legit WinXP Pro SP2 would not accept the Dell key.
But behold! A mysterious copy of this needed software fell out of the sky and landed in my lap. The key on the side of the machine worked. The copy of XP ascended back to heaven, never to be seen again. And all was good.
So the moral of the story is that it doesn’t matter where you get it from. You paid for the key, not the disk. So get it from wherever you need to and as long as your key is legit, your install follows.
That key was the disk key. If you would have tried to install WXP with a different disc, and tried to use the same key, it would not have worked.
Try it sometime…
Or better yet try to activate it…
Grammar aside, this is wrong. If you have the correct version of Windows XP for the key you own, it will work, regardless of the physical media used. My company uses a single copy of XP (from MSDN, as it happens) to install, but each machine has it’s own key that came with the media from the store (which we don’t bother to open).
As long as the key matches the install version (OEM, retail, volume, etc.), it will work fine.
Service Pack, etc.
You can go through all sorts of irritation if you don’t know exactly what version you need. Anyone know if there’s a resource that can give you your media version based on your key?
-Joe
Yes, that’s what I meant by “etc.” The list of versions is:[ul][li]Windows XP Home Edition[]Windows XP Professional Edition[]Windows XP Professional Edition, Open/Select Volume[]Windows XP Professional Edition, Enterprise Volume[]Windows XP Media Center Edition[]Windows XP Tablet PC Edition[]Windows XP Professional x64 Edition[/ul]The first two are available in OEM and Retail versions, and all (except the x64 Edition, which post-dates SP2) have also been released with SP1 and SP2 pre-installed. Accounting for the fact that the Enterprise Volume install does not require a different key for each version, that means that there are 23 different version identities in Windows XP keys.[/li]
Edited to add:
RE: a tool to determine what version a key relates to. My gut feel is that Microsoft would not release code that would necessarily decode the key, even in part, in an easy-to-reverse-engineer form. Granted, the installer must do it, and therefore the code is already available for analysis. If such a facility exists anywhere, I’d look to the license management and auditing systems.
I can’t remember where I saw it but it was only a couple of months ago someone posted a breakdown of the keys to show which group of digits described the version that the key was coded for - it is a fairly simple breakdown