XP Validation Problem following hardware issues...

[Guest]

I recently upgraded my old PIII motherboard c/o of a friend who passed on his
old P4 MSI board. It didn't like my Western Digital HD w/ licensed XP Home
installed and refused to boot. So same friend gave me a drive with Windows XP
Pro on it to get me up and running and I used mine as a slave so I could
transfer data etc. Have run into a problem in that it says the friend's XP
Pro is not a legitimate copy when I tried to verify it. As I've purchased the
Home Edition and have a product key for that, how do I go about legitimising
the Pro edition without the pain of wiping the drive and reinstalling from
the ground up and obexcvious essive cost?

 

[Dave B.]

It wasn't the hard drive that caused the boot issue, it was the XP load, you
can't just throw in a new motherboard in most cases and have it boot, you
need to perform a repair install using your XP cd. As you don't own an XP
Pro license you won't be able to "legitimize" it. Best option is to put your
original drive back in and perform a repair install, or format and do a
fresh install.

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