On 02/08/2010 19:39, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Nope. It's OEM and is licensed for use on the machine it's sold with.
Once that machine dies, Microsoft says the right to use it has also died
- and you have made an agreement with them (the EULA) that says you will
comply with this.

I've never signed any such agreement.


It's mainly called pressing the F8 key.

After that point the marriage has been consummated and in the eyes of
Microsoft lawyers ye are either (1) f'd, or (2) accepting to pay huge
legal fees in the vain hope of not getting f'd.

There is a dodgy loop hole if you can convince them that the motherboard
died and was unreplacable with like, but that involves speaking to MS
product activation staff who have heard it all before...

I've already done this with success. And installed upgrades afterwards.

With this CD and license key sticker? How many activations?

Have a look at the setupp.ini file in the i386 directory on your XP CD
and discover what your "pid" says about the version you have. Details on
the foot of ...

http://www.infocellar.com/winxp/oem-recover-retail.htm

I can quite understand MS or whoever trying their best to prevent
pirating. In this case I just want it on both machines which are only used
by me. They're not losing out on any sales.


OK, you've just denied one starving Microsoft technician one third of
his lunch ...

--
Adrian C