I have a question about How do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?:

I have a legal version of XP Home that I bought to fix up my old laptop. Now I have a new laptop and am selling the old one. Is it ok to sell the old laptop with XP on it if I keep the CD? In other words... I don't want to sell my old laptop with my XP Home CD... I want to keep it for my new laptop in case I want to reformat it.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

You have bought the right to install windows on one pc at a time.  If you install 
it to another machine you must removed it from the old one first.
Thats the legal way anyway...............







On Friday, March 10, 2006 at 11:36 am, Shamus Patrick wrote:

>I have a question about How 

>do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?:


>I have a legal version of XP Home that I bought to fix up my old laptop. Now I have 

>a new laptop and am selling the old one. Is it ok to sell the old laptop with XP 

>on it if I keep the CD? In other words... I don't want to sell my old laptop with 

>my XP Home CD... I want to keep it for my new laptop in case I want to reformat 
it.

>
 

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

If you purchased a retail license and copy of XP (if it came in a pretty retail box 
from the store or mail order), it is licensed to you, and you can install it on as 
many computers as you want, AS LONG AS it's installed on only one computer at a time.

If you plan to keep the license (the Certificate of Authenticity that was pasted 
to the retail box) and the CD key (which was printed on the inside disc carrier), 
and the CD itself, then you should format the computer you are selling, thereby removing 
your copy of XP from the computer.  You are doing this to protect your CD key---which 
can be retrieved very easily from an installed copy of XP.

Presumably your new laptop came with XP Preinstalled, and came with some sort of 
Recovery or Reinstallation CD.

Only a tiny percentage of laptops are shipped by manufacturers without an operating 
system, and its likely that your old laptop had an older version of Windows preinstalled 
on it.  Look on the bottom for the Certificate of Authenticity...that's the version 
of Windows licensed to that computer itself, and that's the version you should install 
and sell the computer with, rather than your personal copy of XP you bought at retail. 
 If you don't have the recovery or OS CDs that came with the computer, check the 
manufacturer's website (or check E-Bay) to see if they can be ordered....if they 
are available, they are usually priced at less than $20-25.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Dan Sarandrea, MCSE wrote: If you plan to keep the license (..) you should format 
the computer you are selling

Formatting is a bit overdone.

If the HD contains other stuff besides the OS which you want to (and legally can) 
pass on to the new owner and you can't uninstall XP and go back to the previous OS, 
I'd boot the laptop from one of the many Linux boot disks out there and delete the 
windows folder. From a legal point of view that's all you need to do.

Does M$ provide a tool to deactivate a copy of XP? If not, they should. After all, 
it was their decision to keep the OS and the user data folders (my documents, my 
pictures, etc.) on a single partition by default.

______________

make xp behave

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

• Search this forum
• Start a new thread on a different subject

• Report abuse of the forum