XP reinstall question

[MG.]

Hi all. I have 3 family PC's at home, all older Dells with XP upgrades on
them. MY question is this:
I want to reinstall XP on one of my daughter's PC's and i have 3 XP upgrade
discs. I have NO CLUE which one is for which machine at this point. At
one time, I had them in sleeves all nicely labeled, but , well..... you
get the idea!
I want to do a TOTAL reformat, reinstall, the whole deal. How do i find
out which disc belongs to who (whom)?
Thanks in advance for any help and as always, best regards
Morey G

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Hi all. I have 3 family PC's at home, all older Dells with XP
upgrades on them. MY question is this:
I want to reinstall XP on one of my daughter's PC's and i have 3 XP
upgrade discs. I have NO CLUE which one is for which machine at
this point. At one time, I had them in sleeves all nicely labeled,
but , well..... you get the idea!
I want to do a TOTAL reformat, reinstall, the whole deal. How do i
find out which disc belongs to who (whom)?

Run something like Belarc Advisor to find out what product key is used on
the working two machines. Don't use those two keys. If the upgrade CDs are
all the same (just plain old upgrade CDs) - it doesn't matter which one you
use to install with - just don't use the product keys from one of the other
working installs.

 

[XP Guy]

Hi all. I have 3 family PC's at home, all older Dells with XP
upgrades on them. MY question is this:
I want to reinstall XP on one of my daughter's PC's and i have
3 XP upgrade discs. I have NO CLUE which one is for which
machine at this point.

The disks themselves do not contain a serial number. So they may all be
idential (identical layout, identical files, etc).

However, they may different in that one disk might be XP-pro SP1,
another might be XP-pro SP2, and the third might be XP-home. If they
are different in that way, then you should match each disk with a
specific computer using that information.

At one time, I had them in sleeves all nicely labeled,

If the disks themselves are stamped or printed with the exact same part
numbers or version numbers, then it makes no difference how you
associate any given disk with any given machine.

I want to do a TOTAL reformat, reinstall, the whole deal. How
do i find out which disc belongs to who (whom)?

Like I just said, it may not matter if the disks are identical.

What you will need to do is to get the product key off the systems you
intend to format and re-install. The product key will NOT be printed on
or contained on a file on the windows CD.

One way to know what the product keys are is to use this software:

http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Here is a direct link for the software:

http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/keyfinder/keyfinder.2.0.1.zip

If you have a Windows sticker stuck to the side, back or bottom of the
computer, the product key printed on it should match the one reported by
that software.

Also important is that you write down the product keys for all other
applications on the hard drive, especially microsoft office. That
software should also tell you what those are.

You should really consider buying a new hard drive instead of
re-formatting the existing drive. If your drive is 4 or 5 years old (or
older) then it's remaining life span is uncertain, and new drives are
really quite cheap. If you reinstall windows on a new drive, you can
then attach the existing drive as a slave or secondary drive and copy
all your data or other personal files very easily and very quickly from
the old drive to the new drive.

 

[MG.]

Thanks so much Shenan! I'm a long time Belarc user so it won't be a
problem. Hopefully i WILL NOT be back with re-install grief....