Re: Ghosting a WinXP boot drive (was: AMD vs. Intel)

On 6/18/06, Jones, John (US) <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The key is sufficient if you have the right kind of XP CD.  If the 6GB
had XP Pro on it and you've a XP Pro CD, that's a good sign.  An XP Home
CD wouldn't work with an XP Pro key.

But it goes a bit deeper than that.  OEM, Retail, and MSDN CDs (I think
there's a fourth) for XP Pro (and Home) are also slightly different and
a key for the OEM version won't work with a Retail CD, etc.  Your key &
CD need to match.

Are MSDN WinXPs targeted to Windows developers?  If so, I don't think we
would have necessarily  had that one.  Could the 64-bit XP be the fourth one
you're thinking of?

Even more, an XP (Pro or Home) CD with no pre-loaded SP vs. one with SP1

vs. one with SP2 are also keyed uniquely.

Makes sense.

I don't know how to tell from looking at a key what CD it matches with.

I don't know if anyone can tell.

I'm sure Microsoft covered itself on that one.

Quite a pain, yes?


Eh.  I've come to expect no less from Microsoft.

Worst case, you can buy XP Pro OEM for about $135-140.


Not worth it.  My worst case is to borrow an XP Pro disk and try it.  If it
doesn't work, no biggee.

I seem to recall (not saying much there) that there were "corporate"
versions of XP Pro that did not require a product key.  Or was it that the
same product key could be used for multiple (thousands of) installs?

- Dan