On Jan 16, 5:19*pm, wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:21:03 -0800, Winston
wrote:
Wes wrote:

You need to read your OEM licence.
It goes with the machine it was sold with.
A case could be made that you replaced the (defective) motherboard,
then the hard drive, and then put it in a new case with new video card
etc, and ended up with a new machine - but the "COA" sticker is , by
the terms of the licence, to be applied to the case - and they can be
a real bear to remove from the old case to transfer to the new one.
It is not "tied" except by the conditions of the licence.

The way I misunderstand it is that an OEM disk is not tied to any specific
motherboard. *Further, it usually arrives without the fancy packaging and
hardcopy manuals the traditional 'full' version has.


Once you have installed XP, WPA records some specifics of the hardware
to block you from putting clones of that hard disk in multiple
computers. I don't remember the details because I don't abuse the OS
but it assigns a voting weight to about 5 devices and if the vote
total drops below some level it wants to call home to be reauthorized.
IIRC it gives you a month of probation and then refuses to start.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2181167_avoi...re-change.html

The replacement CDs that Dell sent me didn't have a COA and the one on
the case didn't work. I had to beg MS for one.

The SP3 update doesn't require net access for WPA.

jsw