How mcuh can the computer change and the old harddrives stilll work?

[micky]

How much can the computer change and the old harddrives stilll work?

All 3 computers are running XP Home, SP3.

I have a friend who has a friend who has a fairly old computer that
she's happy with, except it no longer works. It doesn't even display
the bootup screen or the logo. Let's assume it can't be fixed. I
checked, by connecting each to my laptop via USB, and both harddrives
are good. Ooops. I only displayed the folder structure,
didn't actually dispaly any text files. I figured as long as there was
no clicking and the directories displayed okay, everything was okay. Do
I have to do it again more thoroughly?


She can't afford to buy anything for 2 months at least, and increased
taxes and food costs are really hurting her, so no matter when, the
money will hurt. Our common friend is going to pay the 50 dollars
below. .

Please correct any mistaken notions I have.

Ebay has not far from here the same make and model she has for only 50
dollars. IIUC, I can just put the two harddrives in this new computer
and everything will be for her as it was, and it won't take me much
time. (Okay, I confess, it's a Dell Dimension 4400, it's 10 years old,
and running XP,)

If, say, the video card has been changed and is wrong, I can take the
video card from the old computer, and then it will be right again.
(Though even without doing that, I can get enough picture out the new
video card to install the right driver for it, right?)


AIUI, OTOH if I go to a diffrerent model even of Dell, it's likely
important different drivers will be needed. Dell has its drivers
available online (and I have another computer with which to download
them and copy them to a flashdrive) but some drivers are so important
the computer won't even run enough to accept new drivers, and without
some chart from Dell that doesn't even exist online, I won't be able to
know in advance which models have these changes, and the only way to be
sure it will work is to use the very same make and model.

(What are the things for which the wrong driver will prevent the
computer from working well enough to replace the drivers?)


(I have software, that I've never used, both from Paragon and Acronis
that is designed to get around this problem, but I just don't want to
spend the time for the friend of a friend. (It's also crowded and
inconveniet to work there.) ) I'm figuring changing the harddrives
will be 30 minutes to an hour, and anything more complicated will take
me 4 to 8 hours.


There is also for sale, about 30 miles farther away, another Dell 4400,
reconditioned, but this one has a 2.4 gig cpu instead of 1.5. That
would be nice I guess, though all she does is read email, write email,
look at webpages, and sometimes print pictures. ( Does a faster cpu
mean much? I think the only thing slowing her down most of the time is
her DSL connection, not the cpu speed????) Most importantly IIRC,
there are no drivers for the CPU so she could go to a faster one and if
that were the only change, her two old harddrives would work fine,
right??

Thanks a lot.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ebay has not far from here the same make and model she has for only 50
dollars. IIUC, I can just put the two harddrives in this new computer
and everything will be for her as it was, and it won't take me much
time. (Okay, I confess, it's a Dell Dimension 4400, it's 10 years old,
and running XP,)

Windows will probably want to be reactivated (as would anything else
with activations tied to the machine) but I would expect it to work.

If, say, the video card has been changed and is wrong, I can take the
video card from the old computer, and then it will be right again.
(Though even without doing that, I can get enough picture out the new
video card to install the right driver for it, right?)

Again, I think you're right.

AIUI, OTOH if I go to a diffrerent model even of Dell, it's likely
important different drivers will be needed. Dell has its drivers
available online (and I have another computer with which to download
them and copy them to a flashdrive) but some drivers are so important
the computer won't even run enough to accept new drivers, and without
some chart from Dell that doesn't even exist online, I won't be able to
know in advance which models have these changes, and the only way to be
sure it will work is to use the very same make and model.

Here you'll almost certainly need to do a repair install.

(What are the things for which the wrong driver will prevent the
computer from working well enough to replace the drivers?)

Don't expect a successful boot with the core drivers being wrong.

There is also for sale, about 30 miles farther away, another Dell 4400,
reconditioned, but this one has a 2.4 gig cpu instead of 1.5. That
would be nice I guess, though all she does is read email, write email,
look at webpages, and sometimes print pictures. ( Does a faster cpu
mean much? I think the only thing slowing her down most of the time is
her DSL connection, not the cpu speed????) Most importantly IIRC,
there are no drivers for the CPU so she could go to a faster one and if
that were the only change, her two old harddrives would work fine,
right??

A CPU swap shouldn't matter. It also isn't going to make much
difference in what you describe as her use of the machine.

 

[Paul]

How much can the computer change and the old harddrives stilll work?

All 3 computers are running XP Home, SP3.

I have a friend who has a friend who has a fairly old computer that
she's happy with, except it no longer works. It doesn't even display
the bootup screen or the logo. Let's assume it can't be fixed. I
checked, by connecting each to my laptop via USB, and both harddrives
are good. Ooops. I only displayed the folder structure,
didn't actually dispaly any text files. I figured as long as there was
no clicking and the directories displayed okay, everything was okay. Do
I have to do it again more thoroughly?


She can't afford to buy anything for 2 months at least, and increased
taxes and food costs are really hurting her, so no matter when, the
money will hurt. Our common friend is going to pay the 50 dollars
below. .

Please correct any mistaken notions I have.

Ebay has not far from here the same make and model she has for only 50
dollars. IIUC, I can just put the two harddrives in this new computer
and everything will be for her as it was, and it won't take me much
time. (Okay, I confess, it's a Dell Dimension 4400, it's 10 years old,
and running XP,)

If, say, the video card has been changed and is wrong, I can take the
video card from the old computer, and then it will be right again.
(Though even without doing that, I can get enough picture out the new
video card to install the right driver for it, right?)


AIUI, OTOH if I go to a diffrerent model even of Dell, it's likely
important different drivers will be needed. Dell has its drivers
available online (and I have another computer with which to download
them and copy them to a flashdrive) but some drivers are so important
the computer won't even run enough to accept new drivers, and without
some chart from Dell that doesn't even exist online, I won't be able to
know in advance which models have these changes, and the only way to be
sure it will work is to use the very same make and model.

(What are the things for which the wrong driver will prevent the
computer from working well enough to replace the drivers?)


(I have software, that I've never used, both from Paragon and Acronis
that is designed to get around this problem, but I just don't want to
spend the time for the friend of a friend. (It's also crowded and
inconveniet to work there.) ) I'm figuring changing the harddrives
will be 30 minutes to an hour, and anything more complicated will take
me 4 to 8 hours.


There is also for sale, about 30 miles farther away, another Dell 4400,
reconditioned, but this one has a 2.4 gig cpu instead of 1.5. That
would be nice I guess, though all she does is read email, write email,
look at webpages, and sometimes print pictures. ( Does a faster cpu
mean much? I think the only thing slowing her down most of the time is
her DSL connection, not the cpu speed????) Most importantly IIRC,
there are no drivers for the CPU so she could go to a faster one and if
that were the only change, her two old harddrives would work fine,
right??

Thanks a lot.

Are there any charitable organizations in that city, that
recycle computers for free ?

Perhaps you could take the computer to them for debugging.
Not replacement. Just to see if they could do a few simple
steps to revive it. Or tell you which card is busted.

The person obviously doesn't want to spend any money on it.
Two months from now, they'll be no more financially able
than they are today. So a first step, would be finding them
someone who could do some testing for free.

With the older Dells, you have to be careful of the era where
the ATX cable harness was non-standard. Dell had a "stupid time",
where the ATX power connector wasn't the same as regular computers.
This causes lock-in to Dell power supplies, instead of industry
standard ones. I don't know if this is one of those
machines or not. You would get a "wire color diagram" for 20 pin
ATX, and compare to what you find on the supply. Since the PC Power
people are pretty well gone now (would have been part of the
downfall of OCZ), a source of look-alike replacements of high
quality, might not be available.

Important info would be:

1) Do the fans spin ? If you hear fans, that helps a lot.
2) Some Dells with the single blower that cools everything,
if that fan is disconnected, the computer won't start.
3) Some Dell Northbridge chips, have wire restraints on them.
The wires clip onto hooks. If a hook pulls out of the
motherboard, there is an electrical continuity check. The
computer won't start, if a hook has pulled out. They were
clever enough to know the solder holding the hook fails,
but not clever enough to use good mechanical design that
does not need stupid protections like this! The Dell won't
start, to prevent the Northbridge from overheating.

The Dimension 4400 has a four LED diagnostic code output,
with yellow/green colors to it. Startup errors are
displayed with colored LEDs. If nothing is on the
CRT display, you'd start with the LEDs. You'd only look for
LEDs, if the machine has power and the fan is running.
If the fan is running full blast, that means the
CPU crashed running the BIOS, and is no longer sane.
Insanity can be caused by bad RAM (test one stick at
a time). Insanity could also be caused if the 2x2 ATX
power cable for the processor, fell out. If the diagnostic
LED display is all-ones or all-zeros (unchanged), then that
too is a sign the CPU could not write a diagnostic code to
the LED bank.

https://web.archive.org/web/2004120...l.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4400/codes.htm

Taking the side off the machine, and inspecting the tops
of the capacitors, will tell you whether the motherboard
is compromised. And then, you'd be in replacement
territory. The aluminum cylinders near the CPU socket,
have shiny aluminum on top. If you see orange-brown
goo up there, the board would need to be "re-capped".
And the Ebay replacement at $50 would be cheaper
(assuming the caps on it were intact). Some Dells
have characteristic cap failures - it's always the
same two caps or six caps, that leak. I would have
to look that up, if present.

*******

I don't know the details of Dell activation, when the
hardware configuration has changed. When the Dell OS is
restored to a hard drive (restore from hidden partition),
the SLIC in the BIOS provides proof it's a Dell and it
activates without contacting Microsoft. But for a machine
where the OS is already activated, if you change out
the motherboard, it's not clear to me what the activation
logic is going to do about that. I presume you could
request activation again or something. So that's a research
topic. These are things you could Google, for leads.

rundll32.exe syssetup,SetupOobeBnk # how I rearm unactivated WinXP
msoobe /a # check the activation state

The Dell motherboards might use Intel chipsets. The motherboard
might be exactly the same, if you were purchasing another 4400,
so the driver for IDE hard drives would work and the machine
could start booting. You'll see a ton of "new hardware found"
messages. I've gone through this in my old Win2K days, and
back then, it was possible to resurrect a machine with
different hardware. But the IDE driver is the key, as
otherwise you'd get "Inaccessible boot volume" and be dead
in the water. Since both have Intel chipsets, it should
at least start booting.

Modern motherboards, the built-in NIC and its MAC address, provide
a strong indicator to the OS that it is still on the same hardware.
If the Dell 4400 uses a NIC card, you could transfer the NIC
card and effectively transfer the serial number with it. I
expect the BIOS SLIC table that says "I'm a Dell", proves that the
OS should be activated. But there could still be some activation
step that needs to be done. There could be other serial numbers
on the Dell, that don't get transferred.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

I think you're still at the level, of asking questions
of this person. Fans running ? 4 LED Diagnostic code visible ?
Take side off, good caps (no brown goo) ? Are internal
plugs still plugged in ? Is the Northbridge aluminum
heatsink askew (not held down properly). If fans running,
does it sound like a vacuum cleaner, or running at "normal"
fan speed ?

Diagnostic procedures include:

1) Removing hardware subsystems bit by bit, and listening
for changes.
2) Turn off power, unplug. Remove NIC card and place in
antistatic bag (noting slot number). Remove sound card
if present. This is in case a failed card is holding down
the bus.
3) If you pull a video card from the AGP slot, there should
either be a diagnostic code for "video error" or a beeping
sound. Same goes for system RAM. Power off, unplug. Remove
all RAM, place in anti-static bag. Start the machine. Do you
hear beeps ? Or see a diagnostic code ? These tests are intended
to see if the processor is sane enough to run BIOS code, the
motherboard chipset is intact, the motherboard has all major
power rails up, and can either load a diagnostic code, or make
a beep sound. Just seeing the diagnostic code get loaded, means
a lot of the computer is working.

This is a form of onion-skin testing, peeling layers off
the machine until you get a positive response.

You'd carry a spare AGP video card, a spare PCI video card,
spare DDR memory (as Wikipedia says the 4400 uses DDR). I think
I have a spare DDR400 here I'd put in my kit bag. DDR400 is
backward compatible with DDR333, DDR266 etc.

But if the fan is off, the supply appears to be out of sorts,
I'd be a little careful subbing in a standard supply. At least
without checking the colors on the wiring harness. You can do
a lot of damage if that detail is not correct. Two Dell computers
of the same model number, will share the same wire pattern for
power, so you don't have to worry about swapping between an
Ebay purchased same-model, and the broken machine.

Paul

 

[micky]

As I said a few days ago, the computer had a computer transplant and is
working quite well now. We used the computer in the previous
paragraph, which only cost 40 dollars However the mutual friend of me
and the computer owner had to drive an extra 20 or 30 miles to Arlington
Va. from Baltimore, in very heavy rain I think it was. But he could
have waited a day or two for better weather. It was his choice.

The computer worked from the start with the old harddrives. What I
didn't say in my previous post was that System Properties started up
quickly (with the OS and registration info), but the last 3 lines giving
the CPU and the RAM took at least 30 seconds. That bothered me, but
today it only took one or two seconds. Go figure. The owner says it
runs fast enough (and she uses a probably newer, maybe much newer
computer at work all day, so that's good that she's happy ) except for
startup.

She has 28 start-up programs and I've gotten rid of 2, so I need to look
at a good list and see which others can be eliminated.

Until then I told her to use Hibernate 6 days out of 7 and it would
start pretty quickly.

Thanks again, Paul


You can skip all of the rest of this if you want to, because the
computer is fixed.

Are there any charitable organizations in that city, that
recycle computers for free ?

There's one, that I used to volunteer with myself 10 or 15 years ago.
I had to stop though. The office was stuffed full of tables and people
and I could ony take it for 10 minutes before claustrophobia set in. I
learned more than I helped them, but I guess that was common.

Perhaps you could take the computer to them for debugging.
Not replacement. Just to see if they could do a few simple
steps to revive it. Or tell you which card is busted.

The person obviously doesn't want to spend any money on it.
Two months from now, they'll be no more financially able
than they are today. So a first step, would be finding them
someone who could do some testing for free.

With the older Dells, you have to be careful of the era where
the ATX cable harness was non-standard. Dell had a "stupid time",
where the ATX power connector wasn't the same as regular computers.
This causes lock-in to Dell power supplies, instead of industry
standard ones. I don't know if this is one of those
machines or not. You would get a "wire color diagram" for 20 pin
ATX, and compare to what you find on the supply. Since the PC Power
people are pretty well gone now (would have been part of the
downfall of OCZ), a source of look-alike replacements of high
quality, might not be available.

Important info would be:

1) Do the fans spin ? If you hear fans, that helps a lot.

The fan was not working at first. That's why we thought we needed a
fan. (Sort of like people who think their tv needs a new picture tube
when there is no picture.)

2) Some Dells with the single blower that cools everything,
if that fan is disconnected, the computer won't start.

Yes, other than the powersupply fan, there was only one fan at the end
of a shroud. It wasn't working when the case was closed or open, but
later it did work for a while. Maybe that was the one time the monitor
showed one of the start-up screens.

3) Some Dell Northbridge chips, have wire restraints on them.

An N or Z shaped wire? _|
Or like this? |

Yes, it has that, but it was still connected at both ends.

The wires clip onto hooks. If a hook pulls out of the
motherboard, there is an electrical continuity check. The
computer won't start, if a hook has pulled out. They were
clever enough to know the solder holding the hook fails,
but not clever enough to use good mechanical design that
does not need stupid protections like this! The Dell won't
start, to prevent the Northbridge from overheating.

The Dimension 4400 has a four LED diagnostic code output,
with yellow/green colors to it. Startup errors are
displayed with colored LEDs. If nothing is on the
CRT display, you'd start with the LEDs. You'd only look for
LEDs, if the machine has power and the fan is running.
If the fan is running full blast, that means the
CPU crashed running the BIOS, and is no longer sane.
Insanity can be caused by bad RAM (test one stick at
a time). Insanity could also be caused if the 2x2 ATX
power cable for the processor, fell out. If the diagnostic
LED display is all-ones or all-zeros (unchanged), then that
too is a sign the CPU could not write a diagnostic code to
the LED bank.

The lights were all blank, my friend thinks. I meant to bring a cord
tonight to see if the lights went on, but the day after the last time we
had the thing plugged in, neither of us remembers seeing them on.

It's a shame. I have a Dell but I so rarely look at the back that I
forgot about the four lights and their meanings and didn't even think
to look at them. It's a good thing this all worked out okay or I'd
be kicking myself

https://web.archive.org/web/2004120...l.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4400/codes.htm

Taking the side off the machine, and inspecting the tops
of the capacitors, will tell you whether the motherboard

The caps looked fine.

is compromised. And then, you'd be in replacement
territory. The aluminum cylinders near the CPU socket,
have shiny aluminum on top. If you see orange-brown
goo up there, the board would need to be "re-capped".
And the Ebay replacement at $50 would be cheaper
(assuming the caps on it were intact). Some Dells
have characteristic cap failures - it's always the
same two caps or six caps, that leak. I would have
to look that up, if present.

*******

I don't know the details of Dell activation, when the
hardware configuration has changed. When the Dell OS is
restored to a hard drive (restore from hidden partition),
the SLIC in the BIOS provides proof it's a Dell and it
activates without contacting Microsoft. But for a machine
where the OS is already activated, if you change out
the motherboard, it's not clear to me what the activation
logic is going to do about that. I presume you could
request activation again or something. So that's a research
topic. These are things you could Google, for leads.

rundll32.exe syssetup,SetupOobeBnk # how I rearm unactivated WinXP
msoobe /a # check the activation state

The Dell motherboards might use Intel chipsets. The motherboard
might be exactly the same, if you were purchasing another 4400,
so the driver for IDE hard drives would work and the machine
could start booting. You'll see a ton of "new hardware found"
messages.

Not even one. I left the new computer network card in -- didn't
transfer hers -- but they were similar enough it didnt' say anything.

Also she had a card with 2 or 3 USB ports and 2 Firewire ports facing
out (plus one of each inside) but I left his card with 4 USB ports
facing out, but the computer didn't complain.

I've gone through this in my old Win2K days, and
back then, it was possible to resurrect a machine with
different hardware. But the IDE driver is the key, as
otherwise you'd get "Inaccessible boot volume" and be dead
in the water. Since both have Intel chipsets, it should
at least start booting.

Modern motherboards, the built-in NIC and its MAC address, provide
a strong indicator to the OS that it is still on the same hardware.
If the Dell 4400 uses a NIC card, you could transfer the NIC
card and effectively transfer the serial number with it. I

I didn't remember what you said here, and didn't do it.

expect the BIOS SLIC table that says "I'm a Dell", proves that the
OS should be activated. But there could still be some activation
step that needs to be done. There could be other serial numbers
on the Dell, that don't get transferred.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

I will save all this for next time, when replacing the whole computer
isn't so cheap as it was.

 

[micky]

(I ended up replacing everything but the harddrives, from another almost
identical Dell Dimension 4400. (The CPU was faster and the CPU fan was
attached to the heat sink and no shroud, unlike the first one which had
a bigger fan at the output end of the shroud.))


One more question.

Each computer has a sticker on it with a 25 character XP Product Key.

Does the new computer still go with the sticker on it?

Or should I take the sticker from the old case and put it on the newly
acquired case?


Or because they're not supporting XP anymore, MS doesn't really care
anymore about product key?

 

[Paul]

(I ended up replacing everything but the harddrives, from another almost
identical Dell Dimension 4400. (The CPU was faster and the CPU fan was
attached to the heat sink and no shroud, unlike the first one which had
a bigger fan at the output end of the shroud.))


One more question.

Each computer has a sticker on it with a 25 character XP Product Key.

Does the new computer still go with the sticker on it?

Or should I take the sticker from the old case and put it on the newly
acquired case?


Or because they're not supporting XP anymore, MS doesn't really care
anymore about product key?

As I understand it, the purpose of the sticker is so you can
use a regular installer CD to reinstall the OS.

When I did that to my laptop here (reinstall), and used the COA
license key string, the activation made a different kind of prompt.
I had to phone Nicrosoft, and deal with a voice activated server.
I give it a 56 digit number (read off the laptop screen), and the
server speaks a 56 digit response number. The laptop said it
activated, after I entered that long number.

I presume that is some kind of check that the machine has
a valid SLIC table. The key probably can't be abused, and
transferred to a non-Dell machine. But I haven't test that
to see.

So the key on each box, I would expect it to only be
useful if a Dell motherboard was involved. You will be
challenged on the activation, and I can't imagine a
non-Dell motherboard making this easy.

There are people and websites, that specialize in abusing SLIC and
activation, so I suppose other answers are possible. The SLIC
people are particularly coy, never admitting verbally to
what they're up to. But their research still seems to be
pretty intense, whatever their game. SLIC is the BIOS information
that allows automatic activation to work.

Paul

 

[micky]

As I understand it, the purpose of the sticker is so you can
use a regular installer CD to reinstall the OS.

When I did that to my laptop here (reinstall), and used the COA
license key string, the activation made a different kind of prompt.
I had to phone Nicrosoft, and deal with a voice activated server.
I give it a 56 digit number (read off the laptop screen), and the
server speaks a 56 digit response number. The laptop said it
activated, after I entered that long number.

I presume that is some kind of check that the machine has
a valid SLIC table. The key probably can't be abused, and
transferred to a non-Dell machine. But I haven't test that
to see.

So the key on each box, I would expect it to only be
useful if a Dell motherboard was involved. You will be
challenged on the activation, and I can't imagine a
non-Dell motherboard making this easy.

So the sticker should stay with the motherboard?

And/Or it doesn't matter in this case since both motherboards are Dell
and both stickers are Dell?

 

[Paul]

So the sticker should stay with the motherboard?

And/Or it doesn't matter in this case since both motherboards are Dell
and both stickers are Dell?

What the OS image on the hard drive cares about, is a declaration
from the computer hardware (BIOS), that "this is a Dell". Then, it
can activate automatically.

In the case of the COA sticker, when you install, the OS does not activate
automatically with that one. And the check includes an extra step. Exactly
what this is checking for, or what would cause it to fail, I can't
speculate on. Worst case, you might eventually have to talk to
a human, if the automated system fails.

So in a sense, the license keys (OEM license keys), the terms
say they belong to the machine. They're not intended to be transferable.
But the evidence is, that you can move an OS image from an older
Dell, to a newer Dell. As the SLIC table in a newer Dell, seems
to satisfy the activation logic. The thing missing there, might
be the drivers needed to make it work properly. If both the old
computer and the new computer used an Intel chipset, odds are
good the booting process could start, without an "inaccessible
boot volume" happening. (Some other chipsets in the past,
weren't quite as "standard".)

Also, Windows 8 Dells may behave differently than older machines.
A Windows 8 Dell, the BIOS contains an actual key that activates
the OS. I've not heard from anyone, whether there is also a
SLIC table (so you could move WinXP from some other Dell, into
the Windows 8 Dell). There is also no COA sticker on the outside
of a Windows 8 Dell. At least one person claims the OS activated
automatically (and presumably, because the BIOS key mechanism
works with other installer discs). Which is actually better than
my experience with OEM Windows 7 (which required a phone call).

Paul

 

[micky]

What the OS image on the hard drive cares about, is a declaration
from the computer hardware (BIOS), that "this is a Dell". Then, it
can activate automatically.

In the case of the COA sticker, when you install, the OS does not activate
automatically with that one. And the check includes an extra step. Exactly
what this is checking for, or what would cause it to fail, I can't
speculate on. Worst case, you might eventually have to talk to
a human, if the automated system fails.

So in a sense, the license keys (OEM license keys), the terms
say they belong to the machine. They're not intended to be transferable.
But the evidence is, that you can move an OS image from an older
Dell, to a newer Dell. As the SLIC table in a newer Dell, seems
to satisfy the activation logic. The thing missing there, might
be the drivers needed to make it work properly. If both the old
computer and the new computer used an Intel chipset, odds are
good the booting process could start, without an "inaccessible
boot volume" happening. (Some other chipsets in the past,
weren't quite as "standard".)

Also, Windows 8 Dells may behave differently than older machines.
A Windows 8 Dell, the BIOS contains an actual key that activates
the OS. I've not heard from anyone, whether there is also a
SLIC table (so you could move WinXP from some other Dell, into
the Windows 8 Dell). There is also no COA sticker on the outside
of a Windows 8 Dell. At least one person claims the OS activated
automatically (and presumably, because the BIOS key mechanism
works with other installer discs). Which is actually better than
my experience with OEM Windows 7 (which required a phone call).

Paul

Thanks a lot, Paul.

 

[John Weiss]

One more question.

Each computer has a sticker on it with a 25 character XP Product Key.

Does the new computer still go with the sticker on it?

Or should I take the sticker from the old case and put it on the newly
acquired case?

Technically, the OEM product key goes with the motherboard, so you
would keep the one that came with the current active motherboard.

OTOH, I doubt MS worries too much about XP product keys any more...

 

[micky]

Technically, the OEM product key goes with the motherboard, so you
would keep the one that came with the current active motherboard.

Thanks. In that case I don't have to change anything,

OTOH, I doubt MS worries too much about XP product keys any more...

If there were some grizzled old man in a drity crowded office keeping
track of this, I'd figure you were right, but since it's computerized,
it might run for another 100 years.