Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests XP Home Reinstall

I'm trying to reformatt and reinstall Windows XP Home on my GF's computer. She has a CD Key for Home, but I can't find the disc for the life of me. No big deal, so I downloaded a copy (nothing illegal about that) and it won't take the key. I try a different version of XPH, still no go. I've tried OEM and retail verisons, no SP and SP2, Still nothing.

Anyone have any ideas? Anyway to find out what version of Windows will work with a certain key?

This is driving me nuts!

i formatd my hard drive and reinstalled windows the other day. it didnt ask me for a key. it was the cd that came with my gateway pc. i used the disc to install windows xp on my girlfriends laptop and it works but i just have to register it. find someone with a good copy with a serial #. my windows xp disk says for use on gateway pc only but the laptop is a compaq.

Most manufacturers are starting to place the key onto the CD and running a Admin install so that you bypass the key entry. Specific CDs for specific manufacturers will have a tattoo on the hard drive as well. Ran into a couple issues with warranty work for customers on HPs. They need the tattoo installed before reinstall on a new OEM hard drive.

What manufacturer do you have? Dells always use OEM CD, compaq and HP are pretty picky as far as what CD you use.

Heres the scoop.....

There are 3 different XP Home types:

1. XP Home OEM
2. XP Home Retail (Upgrade)
3. XP Home Retail (Full)

Now, if your computer has the product key on the side of the case as you say, it is with no doubt a Home OEM. Any original Microsoft XP Home OEM disk will work regardless of Service Pack.

As mentioned above, manufacturers do not use this key during their installation. It is just there for licensing reasons. They either provide you with a disk to reinstall that has a product key built in and no activation, or no disk and give you a recovery partition on the hard drive.

In order to install any way other than the manufacturers setup, you need the correct Microsoft disk. Downloading from the net can be a nightmare as you will never truely know what disk you downloaded.

Find someone that has a disk and copy it.

Only in very very rare cases, you can enter the product key and use the correct disk, and it will not accept. Only computers I've seen this with is certain HP Pavilion laptops. Microsoft is aware of this problem and only solution they give is using the HP Recovery which does not ask for the key. (I think HP was printing bootleg product keys )

Good luck.