Windows XP COA sticker / license ownership question

vyseyboy

Call me a rotten tramp, but a large local business near where I live recently threw out a decent (and very modern,) tower desktop system into an on-street skip. Not liking to see such things go to waste, I had an ask around, and they readily agreed to let me have it, to my surprise. (They'd dumped it because it "ran really slow, and had loads of viruses.")

I was pleased to see that they'd taken all hard disks out, (meaning their stated reason for dumping it baffles me,) but there was a shiny XP home COA sticker still on the side.

Now, I'm not really desperate for XP licenses, but have the company handed over the license with the tower? Could I legitamately use the product key with my current XP home OEM CD (after installing a fresh HDD of course,) and give this tower to my friend, without breaking the law? I'm assuming that they didn't take note of the product key, in order to use it at a later date, but I suppose that's a far-fetched possibility.

Worst comes to the worst, I install xubuntu and try and teach my friend how to use it. But it would be handy if I could legitimately save myself the cost of an XP home license in the future

Regeneration

is it retail version or oem ?
If it's oem then yes, because the license is not transferable to any other machine so they would not be able to use it (not strictly true as it is allowed in certain countries e,g, Germany), where as if it is a retail version it can be used on any machine that you wish to transfer it to in line with there EULA policy

Marty_J

If it has a sticker on the side, I would assume that the copy of Windows is an OEM copy, and so is married to the hardware it was originally installed on. If this is the case, then that Windows licence will only ever be able to be used on the PC you rescued.

Personally I would imagine that this means that ownership of the hardware implies ownership of the licence, but I'm not absolutely sure. You might run into problems if the copy of Windows was XP Pro, and your install disks are XP Home.

vyseyboy

The COA sticker is an OEM one according to this site:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/content.aspx?pg=coa
and the tower is an HP.

The disk is an OEM one, for a Dell.

I suppose the difference in manufacturer might present technical difficulties, but afik, it's OK to apply the original OEM license back on the HP desktop, given that none of the hardware is any different from when it was originally sold (excpet the HDD?)


...and both disks and licenses are for XP home.

Thanks for the input so far.

Marty_J

I'm only trying to make an educated guess, but I imagine that would be OK. The licence is solely for the computer you rescued, so if it wasn't given away with that computer, then it could never be used again.

If you're only changing the HD, then you should be able to activate it without any problems.

vyseyboy

Thanks again. I'll sleep on it, but might end up caving in to guilt and telling them that it's actually still pretty worthwhile for them to keep it and start from scratch.

spud17

Talk about coincidences.
I've got a similar situation with XP pro.Always on the scrounge, someone let me have their sons old PC for parts, complete with COA, he was happy for me to use it.But I've not tried to use it.
I tend to agree with Marty J, a new HD isn't going to affect activation.
For the record, due to various HD problems I've reactivated twice recently with different HD's to the original. Also it's been upgraded to an Athlon xp2400 from a Duron 1.3.
All activated online automatically.

Hungerdunger

vyseyboy wrote: »

Thanks again. I'll sleep on it, but might end up caving in to guilt and telling them that it's actually still pretty worthwhile for them to keep it and start from scratch.

What is there to feel guilty about? They've skipped it; you got permission to take the tower from the skip (which is probably more than most people would have done), so stop worrying and pat yourself on the back for showing some initiative.

And let us know if you get it to work.

tomsolomon

I had one of these from a friend, with a Belarc advisory note on the HDD.
It had all sorts of serial numbers from XP Pro to Office 2003.
The tower is now your property and I should imagine all the software that came with it.
After all if you purchased a second hand pc from EBAY pre installed, the license would be yours....
Pitty you couldn't have got hold of the HDD aswell...;)

superscaper

spud17 wrote: »

Talk about coincidences.
I've got a similar situation with XP pro.Always on the scrounge, someone let me have their sons old PC for parts, complete with COA, he was happy for me to use it.But I've not tried to use it.
I tend to agree with Marty J, a new HD isn't going to affect activation.
For the record, due to various HD problems I've reactivated twice recently with different HD's to the original. Also it's been upgraded to an Athlon xp2400 from a Duron 1.3.
All activated online automatically.

No big deal if it doesn't. Phone Microsoft, tell them, they manually reactivate and give you the code to enter.

vyseyboy

The XP install seemed to work fine without the need for reactivation, using an OEM CD for an HP borrowed from a friend. Perfect.

In a way I'm utterly disappointed that this kind of waste of working hardware can happen!

Edit: I meant without the need to call Microsoft!