Reinstallation of Win XP on Harddrive

[Guest]

My hard drive is about to die. I'm going to replace the hard drive very
soon. When I reinstall Win XP Home addition on my new drive, will I have
problems registering it with Microsoft? I have the original installation
disk with product key.

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Hokie,

If you are referring to Windows Product Activation, there should
not be a problem changing one peace of hardware. Just activate
as normal. For more information on WPA, see here.
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php

 

[Guest]

I was in your boat a few months ago and had to reinstall Windows XP. No
problems re-registering it with microsoft at all! Hope this helped

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Hokieman.

Probably not. Unless WinXP (either Home Edition or Professional) came
pre-installed on your computer, in which case you will need to ask the OEM
who built your computer.

Physically install the new HDD to replace the original. Leave the original
HDD completely disconnected until after WinXP is installed on the new one.
Boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and follow the prompts, including the very early
one that offers to partition and format your new HDD.

WinXP Setup should offer to Activate WinXP over the Internet; say Yes and
this should happen automatically. If there is any problem, you should see
an 800 phone number for a painless 5-minute call to Activate.

Note that Activation is mandatory; Registration is purely voluntary.
Activation is concerned only with the computer itself. If you choose to
Register, you will provide information about yourself (name, address, etc.),
which will be furnished to Microsoft.

RC

 

[Steve N.]

Hi, Hokieman.

Probably not. Unless WinXP (either Home Edition or Professional) came
pre-installed on your computer, in which case you will need to ask the
OEM who built your computer.

Physically install the new HDD to replace the original. Leave the
original HDD completely disconnected until after WinXP is installed on
the new one. Boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and follow the prompts,
including the very early one that offers to partition and format your
new HDD.

WinXP Setup should offer to Activate WinXP over the Internet; say Yes
and this should happen automatically. If there is any problem, you
should see an 800 phone number for a painless 5-minute call to Activate.

Note that Activation is mandatory; Registration is purely voluntary.
Activation is concerned only with the computer itself. If you choose to
Register, you will provide information about yourself (name, address,
etc.), which will be furnished to Microsoft.

RC

I recently replaced a HDD with a larger one and re-installed XP Pro
(OEM) clean after removing all traces of the OS from the original HDD.
The original installation of XP was only a couple weeks old and was
activated on-line. Of course being a clean re-installation I needed to
activate it but this time got the message stating that "this copy of
Windows has been activated too many times" and to call in. I was pressed
for time and shut down instead, intending to deal with it later, and
being a non-production machine I was not too concerned about it antway.
Next day I powered up, hit the Activate Windows link and it went through
without a hitch. WPA is just wierd. I wish MS would either fix it or get
rid of it.

Steve

 

[DanS]

Hi, Hokieman.

Probably not. Unless WinXP (either Home Edition or Professional) came
pre-installed on your computer, in which case you will need to ask the
OEM who built your computer.

speaking of that, why in the world did oem's stop providing 'real' windows
disc's and only making available 'restore' disc's ?

right now i'm in the middle of trying to recover data off of a relative's
harddrive, that somehow got totally screwed up.

it's an hp with a giant hd. hp had it set up with a hidden fat32 partition
for the 'recovery' operation's, and the rest ntfs. funny thing (not really)
but i follwed microsoft's recommendation's for trying to repair it, first
thing.

this totally screwed it up more than it already was.

 

[Alex Nichol]

My hard drive is about to die. I'm going to replace the hard drive very
soon. When I reinstall Win XP Home addition on my new drive, will I have
problems registering it with Microsoft? I have the original installation
disk with product key.

No: It is *activation* that matters - not registration, which you need
not do again, or at all. You can activate over and over on the same
hardware, or 'substantially the same'. See my page
www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm on this, including one Hint in 'Format Hard
drive'