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Win XP for New Hard Drive


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#1
TheWern

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Hello Team,

I have just bought 2 Toshiba Equium Laptops that I bought new drives for. They both have the XP Product Key on the underside. I have a genuine XP Pro disk which is loaded onto my Dell Computer - single licence. I thought I could load this and then validate with the COA product key from the new machine - but that doesnt work. There were no other disks received with the second hand laptops.

I've seen mentioned that you should burn a backup disk to reload onto a new drive but I cant do that now.

I was told by microsoft ages ago that you can get a free download of XP for just this scenario but I cant find it.

Any ideas / suggestions where this may be hidden??

Thanks again,

Sandy
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#2
Neil Jones

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If the licences on the bottom of the laptops are XP Home, your XP Pro disk will not work with those keys. Your Dell CD is tied to the Dell only.

You need to buy or borrow an XP CD for the version of Windows that matches the licence types. An XP Home licence requires an XP Home CD. There is no download of XP available from Microsoft - you may be thinking of Microsoft Office 2007 which is a 25 use trial.
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#3
The Admiral

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Dell CDs don't use a product key: the COA is just for authenticity purposes. Dell OS CDs detect the Service Tag of the computer, and automatically generate, insert, and activate that product key, which is why a Dell CD on a Dell computer won't ask for a Product Key.

OEM is funky, you should contact Toshiba for OEM CDs.
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#4
Neil Jones

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Dell CDs don't use a product key: the COA is just for authenticity purposes. Dell OS CDs detect the Service Tag of the computer, and automatically generate, insert, and activate that product key, which is why a Dell CD on a Dell computer won't ask for a Product Key.


The Dell CDs are Dell's VLKs which have built-in product key as you can't install or use Windows without one at the end of the day. Even if you were able to install the CD on a non-Dell PC it'd want activation straight off anyway and the Dell VLKs don't activate in any way, shape or form in any case, which is also true for most big manufacturer VLKs.
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