Xp home edition and activation question

joemardo1

Hi there,

I have just bought an acer latop at tesco the £599 one which comes with xp home edition installed and seemingly already activated. I have also made a recovery disk from the recovery section on hidden partition. Now this recovery section is simply an image of the factory default + installed software.

My question is, as the laptop is already activated and has the official microsfot sticker with product key bottom of laptop, if I was to simply reinstall a standalone copy of xp home and use that product key would it entitle me to go to microsoft update site and download etc. I get the funny feeling not as if already activated must be registered to acer the laptop makers.

Any advice greatly appreciated and woner if I can get that key registered to myself by contacting microsoft?

joe

Little_John

The problem you will have is that thePC is installed with the OEM version of XP home. the retail box version of XP home or pro use diferent cd keys so it wont activate over the internet.

You can activate over the phone with the same cd key no problem it just takes a few minutes to do.

robnye

silly question, but why do you want to reinstall xp home?

superscaper

you can activate oem xp over internet so long at's the same laptop. activation and registration are different things. so it'll be activated to your laptop not to a person or company.

joemardo1

"silly question, but why do you want to reinstall xp home?"


No reason at the moment. But its nice to find out if I
can use that key should I ever feel like installing xp home from scratch on the laptop and be able to use that key.Thanks for replies

joe

superscaper

I don't see any problem with that.