[superstar]

I just purchased a new motherboard. So I want put all of my current pc equipment over to it [i.e: hard drives, ram, etc]. I purchased Windows Xp years ago. A few years back in maybe 2006... Well I wanted to know if Microsoft will give me an activation code to unlock XP when I do a fresh install of it [when I change the motherboards].

I mean it's 2009 so I have no idea if they'll say "No we won't let you use XP anymore, we let you use it long enough", or "We don't support or sell XP anymore so we don't provide activation keys for it anymore, so get Vista". I'm just assuming here...

I always call them because when you do a fresh install the operating system asks you to do so and give them the code you have, so they can than unlock XP with the code they'll give you.

& by the way I do have the actual XP disc I bought at the Wal Mart. Which is a Win98 upgrade to WinXP SP2 disc. I don't necessarily have to have Win98 on the system to upgrade. I can simply have no OS on the hard drive, install WinXP, and pop in the Win98 disc when asked during the XP install to verify I at least have it. I did that the first time I installed it long ago... I was new to XP at the time so I messed up a bunch of settings when I first installed it just to mess around and learn XP. This was years ago, and as I was fooling around with XP I reinstalled it about 3-5 times due to my constant fooling around until I got a hang of it.



Well thanks for the replies!

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You should not have an issue with activation.
You may have to make a phone call to them as you did once before, but not a problem.

And they should not care that it is an older sytem OS.

[123Runner]

You should not have an issue with activation.
You may have to make a phone call to them as you did once before, but not a problem.

And they should not care that it is an older sytem OS.

[Neil Jones]

Licences are perpetual subject to their terms and conditions. Retail licences live on forever and a day providing they're only on one computer at a time, OEM licences die with the computer, etc. Apart from that they're valid until something happens to void the agreement. Even when the day comes that activation codes are not given out any longer, Microsoft have stated it will be possible to disable activation in XP at that point in time. But that won't be until 2014 at the earliest.