needed licence for windows xp

Cherryscone

can anyone advise ? i bought my laptop second hand last year and now is saying i need a licence ive had a look on ebay and th prices scared me what can i do i lagging and im still on dial up so its slow anyhow .

TonyLisaP

Google it, you can always find options

fwor

No doubt others will disagree but, IMO, if you bought the laptop in good faith having been told that it had a legitimate copy of XP on it, I would just ignore the messages.

Of course if you can take it up with the person that sold it to you and insist that they rectify it then so much the better, but I doubt you'll get far there.

If it is just the "Windows Genuine Advantage" warning it shouldn't adversely affect the performance, and you should still be able to get all security-related patches. There are ways of stopping the WGA message, but you'll have to Google for that, as I don't think discussion of that subject will be allowed here.

unrich

Do you have a certificate of authenticity or a windows label on the current one?
Was it sold as having a legit copy?

If not

Buy another laptop with a kosher copy for example this one.
Sell the other one on ebay after clearing it down and installing linux/free DOS

And put the losses down to experience.

TonyLisaP

unrich wrote: »

Do you have a certificate of authenticity or a windows label on the current one?
Was it sold as having a legit copy?

If not

Buy another laptop with a kosher copy for example this one.
Sell the other one on ebay after clearing it down and installing linux/free DOS

And put the losses down to experience.

why buy a whole new laptop? He can just phone MS and get a genuine license sorted out. Surely this is cheaper?

fwor

unrich wrote: »

Do you have a certificate of authenticity or a windows label on the current one?
Was it sold as having a legit copy?

If not

Buy another laptop with a kosher copy for example this one.
Sell the other one on ebay after clearing it down and installing linux/free DOS

And put the losses down to experience.

Ok, but there is also the possibility that it has a legit copy installed and WGA is in error - there are (reportedly) plenty of examples of this happening, and if after a year the OP cannot contact the seller to confirm on way or the other, why immediately assume that WGA is correct?

TonyLisaP

fwor

you are correct, best thing to do is to contact microsoft. What brand laptop is it? They usually come with the operating system installed and you would have a licence on the bottom of the laptop.

unrich

Goodness did you see the first two lines of my post?

If its not a legit copy then you have to buy one.
If the OP is complaining of the thing being slow then kill the two birds with one stone.
Or end up buying a legit copy and sticking it on a laptop not capable of running it.

(Sounds like the seller stuck XP on a PIII 500Mhz.with 128MB and didn't register it.)

Hey OP do you have the specs of the laptop please?

TonyLisaP

Didn't he say it is slow on the internet as he is using dial up?

jje_2

If it was 100% genuine copy on the Laptop of XP then it should not have suddenly expired after 30 days yes but more than that and it looks like one of the recent updates from MS has found its not a genuine copy .
BUt the vast majority of laptops come with a genuine OEM version of windows with a recovery partition on D drive or even hidden partition .
What make model is the laptop that should help define what windows copy you have .

jje

Cherryscone

TonyLisaP wrote: »

Didn't he say it is slow on the internet as he is using dial up?

lol she!!!
thanks everyone there is all the microsoft badges on , i think the problem is that there was a fault and everything was wiped so the man who fixed it put this version of windows on it its an acer aspire quite an old one but a great size looks like i will have to buy a geuine licence again .