invalid product key

[chicken farmer]

due to some technical challenges, I have had to reinstall windows xp on pc
bought with xp already installed, so now i have two windows xp installation
on my computer. However, the second install needs to be activated, and the
product key that came with the tower is "invalid" - is this because it has
already been installed once? and what can I do about it??

 

[Richard in AZ]

Did you use the Windows Installation Disk that came with the computer, or one you had from another
source?
If the later, then you need the Product Key that came with that disk.
Sounds like you need to do the installation over again, only this time format the drive and make a
clean install that only has one copy of the OS.

| due to some technical challenges, I have had to reinstall windows xp on pc
| bought with xp already installed, so now i have two windows xp installation
| on my computer. However, the second install needs to be activated, and the
| product key that came with the tower is "invalid" - is this because it has
| already been installed once? and what can I do about it??

 

[Ray Parrish]

Hello,

Yes, that's because it's already installed. What you need to do is re-do
your installation and this time remove the extra partition you created
for the second copy. Then format the primary partition and install
Windows there, not in the second partition.

If you want you cn use a thrid party tool first to delete the second
partition and re-merge it with the first so you only have one partition
on your drive. To do this get the GParted Live CD which allows you to do
this. It's available here for free -

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

later, Ray Parrish