XP Serial Key

blackmarketmuzic

blackmarketmuzic

New Member
ok im not posting an illegal post or trying to get a crack or new key. I was just wondering why after i erased my hardrive from the dell and put on a fresh OS that came with the dell (CD) and i put in the serial # that was on the tower of the xp in and it said i still have to activate it. Why would they send you all these backup cd's with the product key and the product key doesnt even work?
 
You do because it's prbably not a corporate edition. Some OEM licences require no activation but this one must do as you may decide to transfer it to another system which is fair enough.
 
You need to activate Windows everytime it is installed. It doesnt matter if it's on the same PC or not, once you reform and/or just reinstall Windows, you need to re-activate because the activation information was erased.

It shouldn't be a problem though, just call up Microsoft.
 
blackmarketmuzic said:
ok im not posting an illegal post or trying to get a crack or new key. I was just wondering why after i erased my hardrive from the dell and put on a fresh OS that came with the dell (CD) and i put in the serial # that was on the tower of the xp in and it said i still have to activate it. Why would they send you all these backup cd's with the product key and the product key doesnt even work?
Click to expand...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457054.aspx

The Product Key and Activating it is not the same thing. If the product key was bad it would not even let you install. The Activating is morcosofts way of making sure it only installed on one computer and to double check the product key to make sure its still a good key since its been released and to match it with the hardware.
 
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