Re: [Thinkpad] Windows XP recovery CD for T23

> From: thinkpad@seebs.plethora.net (Peter Seebach)
> Subject: Re: [Thinkpad] Windows XP recovery CD for T23

> 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.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong (as if I need to ask!), but I believe the
product ID's on the stickers as they come from IBM are OEM codes.

Microsoft now has four families of codes: WXP Home Retail, WXP Home OEM,
WXP Pro Retail and WXP Pro OEM. The codes are incompatible with each other
as far as media goes.

So you cannot use the retail package and a code from an OEM sticker. Nor
are you allowed to use the retail code on more than one machine. However,
I know at least one person has installed XP on more than one machine using
the same code. The codes that come with Microsoft's Action Pack are good
for five machines each, for instance, but other codes might work on more
than one as well.

Microsoft has also been very good about people calling up after screwing
up their machines and resetting activation codes. If it doesn't work, just
give them a call.

I'd try it.

Chris

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Received on Mon Aug 30 03:25:17 2004