I’m standing in front of a computer running XP.
How can I tell, or can I tell, if the computer is running the retail version of XP, was installed with a volume license key, or was installed with an MSDN version?
Yikes. I’m not really sure that there IS a way. Why do you need to know? (the answer to this question may send you down an alternate path which will lead to your answer)
I have a machine on which I want to re-install XP. I can capture the XP license key, but I have no way of knowing which of those varieties it is. So if I use a retail edition XP disk to re-load it, the license key I have will work only if it was originally a retail key. Similarly, if it was originally loaded with a volume license CD, then the key I have will only work if I reload from a volume license CD.
(If these assumptions are incorrect, please let me know!)
Your assumptions are exactly correct.
If this is a legal copy, you could send Microsoft an e-mail with the license key and ask them which it is.
This is, I am assured, a legal copy.
What address at Microsoft?
Forget contacting them; they’re making it really hard to get simple questions like this answered these days.
Go here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012
Look for the Windows Product ID in the output. See if the second set of digits is “640”. If it is, it’s a volume license. If not, it’s retail.
ETA: It will begin with 64… – it will also say what type of Product ID it is too.