[crunch]

I know this next question is off track but on our next one "whitie" we bought an XP upgrade from walmart (noticed the top of box had been carefully cut open at store, only one they had) for a harddrive bought off ebay that came with 2000, cloned it to save then installed upgrade did SP2 and was validated. Few more updates later it was still valid. Then turned it on yesterday and got a message that we may be a victem of fraud and so on. tried to validate and got a message that said something like "thank you for validating and said it was valid" then today turned it on and the message was back. tried my sons unused XP code and said it was valid again, rebooted and the message came back. We know for dang sure that my son's is good and clear. I'm suspecting that the 2000 OS we started with is still floating around out there or the other key got copied at walmart. But both XP keys said they were "validated" when we rechecked them, with Microsoft. The message comes after reboot. Is something remaining in the PC from the original time as we have not yet reinstalled the OS just doing their validations. How do we determine what is invalid, Why didn't my son's unused XP stay clear? He says we got to format and reinstall but I'm thinking Microsoft is on the right track with our used 2000 from Ebay or the walmart product (which will be tough to return, I think) useing my son's key might have ruled out the walmart upgrade being bad as his came back invalid after reboot. I'm lost now and it's killed too much time, abought ready to shuck out $149.00 for a full install. What should we do next? We got the 40gig w/2000 off ebay for $48.00 after shipping and Walmart's upgrade for $89.00. but we wanted to make it daul HDDs with daul OSs. Thank you for any help or leads where to turn. P.S. Running just the 2000 does not get the invalid message so that almost confirms that it's good. Tried running single Hdd to no avail.

Edited by crunch, 10 June 2006 - 11:25 AM.

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Try not to buy software already opened, you wouldn't buy food opened would you, software is the same. Some programs these days only accept one cd key.
You said you "cloned" it. are you using the cloned disc? this could be a problem, also emulation software is not always 100% compatible, it can stop some applications from working properly. Turning it off or uninstalling it has worked for me in the past.
You are probably having problems with the hard drive having 2000 pre installed. You don't know if that was a valid version.
If you do buy a hard drive with software on it, you may aslo get the nasties. A format is always necesary.
I believe a full install is your best option.

[sarahw]

Try not to buy software already opened, you wouldn't buy food opened would you, software is the same. Some programs these days only accept one cd key.
You said you "cloned" it. are you using the cloned disc? this could be a problem, also emulation software is not always 100% compatible, it can stop some applications from working properly. Turning it off or uninstalling it has worked for me in the past.
You are probably having problems with the hard drive having 2000 pre installed. You don't know if that was a valid version.
If you do buy a hard drive with software on it, you may aslo get the nasties. A format is always necesary.
I believe a full install is your best option.

[Fenor]

And just because the XP CD you purchased was an upgrade cd, this doesn't mean that you have to have another operating system installed and then perform the upgrade. You boot the CD in just like you would when installing Windows 2000. The only difference is that before the installation starts, it will open up the cd-rom drive and ask you to insert a cd with a previous version of Windows on it. Once it verifies that you have a cd with an older version of Windows on it, the installation will continue like normal, where you can partition the hard drive, format and install Windows.

Fenor

[crunch]

Great, then you have confirmed my thoughts about both. The drive shall be formated, I have another 2000 brand new still sealed in the package. I'll try to exchange the XP with Walmart as I noted it with the service department as being opened before we purchased it but they only had the one left this week. We'll keep working on the red one that got the new full install that's valid. Thank you very much for the second opinions.