Win XP Home Edition Serial Question

Hi All,

My old laptop died and it came with an original Win XP Home Edition (with the microsoft stker and serial).

I was wondering if I sell the serial number (and therefore the product) does the buyer just have to get a copy of win XP home and install it with my seial number for it to work? Will it matter this was off a laptop and they are installing to a desktop?

Thanks

 

The version of Windows (XP or Vista) that comes pre-installed on a computer (laptop or desktop) is known as an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) version. It is only valid for the specific system that it was originally installed on. When that system dies, so does the Windows license that came with it!

If you purchased a copy of Windows separately and installed it on a computer, you would own that single license and could remove it from one system and reinistall it on another (in theory). But you could not legally install it on two systems simultaneously with the same product key.

Installing OEM versions on multiple systems used to be somewhat common. That's why Microsoft created the "Windows Genuine Advantage" anti-piracy system....you can read more about it here, if interested- LINK

 

What matters is whether the person using the product key (and hence the license) is legally entitled to do so, and generally not where the particular media on which a copy of the OS itself is instantiated.

However, there are peculiarities with so-called OEM versions that ship pre-installed on notebooks. Because the notebook manufacturer pays (or paid, in the case of XP) MS a royalty based on something other than individual licenses (sublicenses, actually, because the purchaser is sublicensing from the manufacturer, not from Microsoft) granted, the copies that come pre-installed are generally locked to that particular hardware, and the disks that come (or used to come) with those systems generally cannot be used on a different system - in your case, going from notebook to desktop is just not going to cut it.

Another difficulty is that the number you have on your COA sticker is not actually a proper product key - again, under the volume licensing arrangements, the preinstalled OS is usually already activated with MS (to make the buyer's life easier, I suppose), and the product key that ships is an OEM key that applies to any number of different copies of the OS that were purchased from the same manufacturer.

This is a difficulty because a retail version of XP - the one you buy in the store - and most likely, even one of the OEM disks you can buy on eBay, will not react well to being fed an OEM-based product key.

So, the long and the short of it is, your buyer will not be able to (legally) do what he intends to do.

 

ok thank guys, off to the bin it goes