Serial Number Problem

[BeeGeeBlueBoy]

I have a PC that genuine XP licence (is is should on the MS badge on the
tower). Because I had to reformat the C drive I could only reinstall from a
restore CD from another PC (because I did not have the source CD nor a
restore partition. I now have the situation that the PC boots up as 'not
genuine'

Presumably to be legal I need to 'tell' the PC the licence number from the
MS badge and I suppose that to do this I have to make some registry entries.

Please would you advise me what I should?

Many thanks

Julian

 

[R. McCarty]

Product keys will only work on a matching XP install CD. The CD
you used, was it an XP CD or a true recovery type ? In some cases
the XP is BIOS locked so that it can only work/validate on specific
vendor computers. For example a Gateway CD may not work if you
use it on a Dell computer.

For your situation you cannot just edit Registry keys. There is a tool
for modifying Product keys but that isn't likely to work in your setup.
You need the original OEM XP CD or a generic OEM CD to load
XP and have it properly activated.