£170 Discount at PC World!

biglugs

all you do is ring the number given when you reinstall, and they issue you a new one that then activates the oem.They used to ask for the full number, now they only ask for the first 6 digits sometimes.
done mine countless times.Never had a prob

Even if you install it on a completely different set of hardware? i.e. motherboard, HDD, memory and graphics card?

amancalledchip

yes, have swapped motherboards, hdd controllers, hdd videocards etc.
when i ring i tell them an item has been replaced/upgraded.

amancalledchip

yes, have swapped motherboards, hdd controllers, hdd videocards etc.
when i ring i tell them an item has been replaced/upgraded.
Infact, my last upgrad was a m/board socket 939 (from a 754), with cpu, a new video card as it was PCIe new ram , as it required dual channel matched, new power supply, new hdd. The only thinks that wernt upgraded were the dvdr drives.LOL

Searcher

biglugs wrote:

Even if you install it on a completely different set of hardware? i.e. motherboard, HDD, memory and graphics card?

I did this last week as well I had an old HP machine with a Licence sticker on it. I built a brand new machine for my brother in law and used the serial from the HP to install Windows on the new machine. A quick phonecall to MS during the activation stage and they gave me a new number (just told them that the old machine was dead and I wanted to transfer the licence)
No problems at all... The new machine has a nice shiny activated copy of XP home and the old machine is now running Linux lol.
This actually isn't a bad way to get a copy of windows cheap If you can pick up an old Time or Tiny machine on ebay for around £50

Edit: the only thing you will need is a proper installation disc but it's easy enough to pick one of those up. It doesn't matter if the disc is a copy so long as the product key is genuine