Re: XP Product Key Question

From: Miss Perspicacia Tick (misstick_at_lancre.dw)
Date: 07/11/04 

Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:52:15 +0100

Footer wrote:
> I need to reinstall XP on my computer, a Compaq Presario, but the
> recovery disk that came with it cannot do this; it only lets me do a
> factory reset which will erase all my data. I have an XP disk that is
> installed on another computer; what I want to do is use this to
> reinstall XP on the first computer long enough to copy all my data
> onto CD's, without activating it. I will then format the hard drive
> and run the recovery CD and restore the computer to factory
> condition. I know I will have to use the product key from the second
> version of XP for this; I just want to make sure that formatting the
> hard drive will truly erase any record of this and that there will be
> no weird licensing problems later on.

What is preventing you from backing up now? You (probably) couldn't use a
retail disc to repair a recovery CD installation.

> A side question: I have an old Windows Me CD lying around somewhere,
> could I use this if I had to? I thought I remembered reading
> somewhere that XP used a different file structure or something that
> would make it unable to copy my old files. Anybody have any more
> information?

You couldn't use ME and it has nothing whatsoever to do with file systems
(unless your disk is formatted NTFS) but the fact that it's older than XP
and you'd need to format anyway and lose your data.