Installing new XP Home

[artnlsn]

I have a 6 year old Dell with Win XP Home and SP3. I would like to clean my
hard drive and reinstall Win XP except I lost the reinstallation disk. I
purchased another XP Home SP3 from eBay and it is labeled licensed for
distribution only with a new PC. It has a Product Key.
My question: Can I use this new XP for a reinstallation?

 

[Big_Al]

artnlsn said this on 1/11/2009 2:16 PM:

I have a 6 year old Dell with Win XP Home and SP3. I would like to clean my
hard drive and reinstall Win XP except I lost the reinstallation disk. I
purchased another XP Home SP3 from eBay and it is labeled licensed for
distribution only with a new PC. It has a Product Key.
My question: Can I use this new XP for a reinstallation?

There are two basic types of software, Retail and OEM.
Retail is usually bought at the brick and mortar stores.
OEM is provided to people who build PCs and will support the product
rather than MS. Like Dell supports their own product on the PC, thus
they get/give an OEM license. Its cheaper to MS since they don't
support you, and cheaper to Dell.
Then there are generic OEM CDs and OEM CDs that are locked to the
motherboard (or system) they are designed for.

The keys don't work between products. So you have to determine what
product you have and what keys you have.
If you have a key with the version you bought, in theory, they go
together if you got it from a reputable source. And you're good.
It may or may not work with your existing key.

 

[Leonard Grey]

You need a Dell OEM CD (and even then, no guarantees). And you better
hope it's legal if it's the only one you have, so I would think twice
about buying on eBay.

 

[Clark...]

I have a 6 year old Dell with Win XP Home and SP3. I would like to
clean my hard drive and reinstall Win XP except I lost the
reinstallation disk. I purchased another XP Home SP3 from eBay and it
is labeled licensed for distribution only with a new PC. It has a
Product Key. My question: Can I use this new XP for a reinstallation?

The answer is yes.
Your Dell is OEM and so is the CD, I would use the label on the Dell when
you reinstall and save that new XP license for another PC, because you now
have two licenses (if the second license is legit).. One the Dell came with
and the one you bought, Microsoft cares not of the disk per say but just the
product ID number.
I could go on about the license and OEM versus retail but...

Clark...

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I have a 6 year old Dell with Win XP Home and SP3. I would like to clean my
hard drive and reinstall Win XP except I lost the reinstallation disk. I
purchased another XP Home SP3 from eBay and it is labeled licensed for
distribution only with a new PC. It has a Product Key.
My question: Can I use this new XP for a reinstallation?

Yes.
You are also going to need to use hte Service Tag number on the back of the
PC at teh Dell Support site to get the drivers that aren't on the OEM
install CD. Burn them to another CD.

If you don't do that now, you'll likely have to do it with another system,
as things like your network card probably won't work after the basic XP
install.

HTH
-pk