Windows Xp Home

[Mr Darn]

I'm needing a copy of XP home to reinstall in an old computer for testing. Mines cracked!

Anyone have one spare, or know where i can obtain one cheap?

Thanks in advance.

[threegee]

I've an unused sticker here, unfortunately it's got an Italian key on it!

Can the license stickers be easily peeled? They wear off on a heavily used netbook, and so are probably another M$ profit centre in themselves!

Do you know how to change the serial? I cloned a hard drive to a different machine of same model recently and was pleasantly surprised that the target machine's key could be applied to the old drive image. Authenticated no bother - so far anyway. So maybe this is the way to go for you - providing you can still read the original key. Seems to be a supported thing to do, they just don't want it publicised.

I think XP is quite problematic to MS - they've never had such a long-lived o/s to support. Getting you to pay and pay again for the same code was integral to their business model. But the patches to patches to patches are getting quite ridiculous.

Just remembered that I know someone that has three or four shiny new copies of XP Pro. They are UK ones too. The gotcha is that they aren't currently in the UK though he is at present. I installed one of them on a desktop for him last week and it authenticated no bother.

[Monsta®]

whats cracked the disc or do you mean its a "cracked" version?

[Mr Darn]

By 'cracked' i mean the physical disk i have for the machine has a crack in it. I still have the product key here, so all i need is the disk. XP Pro will not do, as the product key won't work.

I can upgrade it to Vista, but i doubt its worth the trouble. its an old machine, and i dont really want to pay for the vista key just to sort out driver issues.

Just need to format back to XP, so a lend of a disk will do, or a copy of an origional disk, as i dont need a key.