Product Key invalid

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Morten - 31 Jul 2006 23:00 GMT

My computer has experienced all kinds of hardware problems, so I decided to
start over with a new hard drive. I have purchased 2 XP licenses; one that
came with the laptop I bought and one for the home built desktop. I have
recently moved, and am unable to find one of the product keys. When I insert
an XP CD I found in the drawer to install on the new hard drive, it claims
the product key is invalid ! What is wrong? It is a perfectly legal product
key.

Can I in any way retrieve the expected product key from my old hard drive?

Rather unhappy PC user

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Ian - 31 Jul 2006 23:08 GMT

-If you can boot into WinXP from the old HD, then RockXP should be able to
recover it.

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Palindr☻me - 31 Jul 2006 23:18 GMT

> My computer has experienced all kinds of hardware problems, so I decided to
> start over with a new hard drive. I have purchased 2 XP licenses; one that
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>
> Can I in any way retrieve the expected product key from my old hard drive?

IIUC and IANA expert:

Keys are tied to particular installation sets - so, you can't say, use
an OEM licence with a retail installation set, or a corporate
instalation set, or an installation set at a different SP level..

IIRC, if you can still boot off the old hard drive and have aida32,
which is still around for free on download sites if you don't have it,
it will give you the licence key, amongst other things..

But hey, ICBW. Microsoft licences are an absolute pain and I have just
ended up re-installing two machines from scratch - just because
Microsoft don't make it possible to change a Pro<>Home, no matter how
many licences of various types you have..

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Sue

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DL - 01 Aug 2006 00:10 GMT

The winxp that was supplied with the laptop will allmost certainly only be
useable on that laptop.
Its legal but only for the PC it was supplied with
The keys are different, so you need to locate the retail winxp you
purchased, which will have the product key on the pkg

> My computer has experienced all kinds of hardware problems, so I decided to
> start over with a new hard drive. I have purchased 2 XP licenses; one that
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
> Rather unhappy PC user

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