[nyspy]

Okay my most brilliant of friends, I hope you can help me.

My company has three Dell GX260 Optiplex computers that were purchased as an OEM deal. No software came with them- not even Dell's backup CDs.

These particular machines were in an unsupervised satellite office, where the employees seemed to have nothing better to do than collect adware (one machine had 1430 pieces after an Ad Aware scan! Another has a corrupt OS from viruses.

An employee tried to reinstall the XP Pro OS and got hung up at the serial number window. The department head went out and purchased three new, full copies of XP Pro.

So here's my question: Even though there are valid C.O.A.'s on each case, I guess XP Pro is different from Home edition in that you have to use the same code that's on the actual CD?

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I'm not sure of the question. Each cd has a product key. Mark the machines and their corresponding cds. Differences between XP Pro and Home explained here:
http://www.microsoft...y/choosing2.asp
Johanna

[Johanna]

I'm not sure of the question. Each cd has a product key. Mark the machines and their corresponding cds. Differences between XP Pro and Home explained here:
http://www.microsoft...y/choosing2.asp
Johanna

[nyspy]

Sorry- I should have made that one more clear.

XP Home allows you to reinstall the software from any XP Home CD, and then enter the key on the computer case.

Is XP Pro different, in that you must use only the code (possibly) embedded in the installation CD?

The reason I'm asking is that I help people with their home computers, and it will be a royal pain if they "lose" their original xp pro cds.

[Johanna]

I keep a Belarc of every machine I work on.
http://www.belarc.co...e_download.html

CDs are interchangeable, product keys correspond to the machine. More info here:
http://www.microsoft...oduct_keys.mspx

Johanna

[nyspy]

OK that makes sense. Here's the part I'm trying to make sense of:

We tried reinstalling from an XP Pro Ugrade CD. When we entered the XP Pro key on the computer case, we got an invalid code warning.

If we had a full XP Pro version, we wouldn't have had the same problem?

Like the Varga girl icon btw.

[Johanna]

XP Pro requires an old cd as proof to use an Update cd, and your OEM machines don't have any? Is that the problem?
http://www.microsoft...ing/matrix.mspx

Johanna