Reformatting my hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter David
  • Start date Start date
D

David

I have been having a number of problems with my computer
recently, and I have nailed it down to being a number of
viruses/ad-ware/spy-ware and/or other infections being on
my system that my antivirus can't find. I have decided
that the best course of action would be to defragmet my
hard drive and re-install the software that I actually
want to have on my system. I'm a bit weary of this idea
though, because I wouldthen have to reinstall windows.

Will I be able to do this, or will microsoft ban me from
installing my copy of windows xp again as my product key
has been registered once before?
 
Hello

If you decide to reformat your harddrive that will be ok and
you can do that, however you need to backup all your data
and you will also have to re-install all your apps and do the
windows updates. MS will not ban you,

Alvin
 
David said:
Will I be able to do this, or will microsoft ban me from
installing my copy of windows xp again as my product key
has been registered once before?
Click to expand...

If it's been more than 180 days since you last installed
WinXP there won't be any problem at all. If it's been less,
you might have to make a phone call to activate. The phone
call's no big deal. I once did two phone activations on the
same day when a new installation of WinXP wasn't to my
liking and I reformatted my HD and started all over again.
 
My copies of XP never make me phone in even when I install it and
activate it on the same computer 3 times in one day (yes, I have screwed
it up that bad before). It should only make you phone in if you have
made a number of hardware changes. Then again, my copies are all from
MSDN, so it may be slightly different from Retail?
 
Back
Top