tony stacy said:
MY COMPUTER QUIT SO I AM GOING TO INSTALL NEW MOTHER BOARD AND NEW NETWORK
CARD AND I HAVE DONE UPGRADES BEFORE AND IT TOLD ME LAST TIME THERE WAS
SOMETHING I HAD TO DO TO UPGRADE NEXT TIME. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT IS IT IS?
AND HOW TO DO I.
MY E-MAIL ADRESS IS (e-mail address removed)
please could someone help?
Doesn't matter what it said (and how could anyone possibly know). Maybe it
said you need an activation code?
Regardless: installing a new motherboard or CPU is usually considered to be
a new computer not covered by the original license and thereby requires that
a new activation code be obtained from Microsoft. They will not give you one
if you are using an OEM provided XP. And don't think a clean install will
get around that, it probably will not and you'll get a surprise the first
time you try to get a critical or any other MS provided update and you'll
have lost all your programs and data in the process, so do a repair install
or upgrade instead (and you'll still probably need to get the activation
code from MS -- the screen will tell you how to do it). If all you have is
the OEM version of XP, then MS will not talk to you because the OEM has the
license (not you) and you must go to the OEM or go buy the full retail
version of XP-Pro (the full retail version of XP-Home can not be used to
upgrade an OEM version of XP-Home, but the full retail version of XP-Pro
will do it even if you already have the OEM version of XP-Pro).
