Re: [Thinkpad] Windows XP recovery CD for T23

Ray, Peter and the List:

There was a technical discussion a while back on XP Licenses. What
happens is Microsoft uses a different number scheme for licenses sold
with systems OEM) vice those sold as original (Full Box). Upgrade
software requires an existing installation of Windows95 through Windows
2000 and reads/verifies the license key from the registry. So an OEM
installation key, such as the one stuck to the bottom of your T23 will
NOT work with a full box version of XP Home/Pro. Oh, if you get the
strange idea to use your 'buddies' key and then install SP2, you will
suddenly find yourself with a much reduced capacity XP installation
until you call, AT YOUR EXPENSE, Microsoft to get a legal license.

Might I suggest the following:

Installing your XP Home version of Windows and then 'upgrading' with
SP2. Better yet, just install XP Home and skipping, for now, the SP2
'upgrade'. There are issues with SP2 and they are being worked by
Microsoft. One is very ugly and disables most Anti-Virus software from
published reports.

Thank you.

James McKenzie

Ray Bayles wrote:

> It wont work with the same key ID/SN. Microsoft saw that coming and
> changed the Key ID structure with each upgrade.
>
> Peter Seebach wrote:
>
>> In message <412F7D7B.2010905@theriver.com>, Ray Bayles writes:
>>
>>> No. When I asked IBM that question on various machines and OS, they
>>> have always told me they would only sell me the recovery disk for OS
>>> of record on the machine in question. It is a Microsoft issue, not
>>> an IBM one.
>>
>>
>>
>> This leads me to a question.
>>
>> I have a ThinkPad with XP Home and Pro. I bought it from IBM with Home,
>> but they sent me the wrong recovery CD, and I bought an XP Pro license.
>>
>> Today, I picked up XP Pro for another system - and got a disk with
>> SP2 on
>> it.
>>
>> Can I load my ThinkPad from that disk? If I just use the IBM restore
>> CD, my ThinkPad will come up with XP (no service packs) and lots of
>> extra
>> cruft, most of which I will then have to struggle to uninstall (such as,
>> say, IBM's DLA, which annoys me, and which refuses to stop notifying me
>> that I could, if I wanted, reenable it). If I use the Windows disk, I
>> can presumably "authorize" it or whatever using the product key I got
>> with
>> my older copy of XP... Or can I? If I can, then I can download
>> drivers from
>> IBM's site, get all the hardware support in, and Be Happy. This
>> would be
>> really neat, but I'm not sure whether it'll work.
>
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Received on Sat Aug 28 02:09:51 2004