Formatting with an XP home CD, while using a XP Media Center key?

Question

I recently purchased a laptop (a Toshiba M115-S3094, if you're curious) that came with Windows XP Media Center...and a whole lotta crap that eats up a lot of CPU and memory. I want to format the lappy to rid of all the crap pre-installed on the computer. Would there be any problems using an XP Home CD, and entering an XP Media Center key? Don't worry, both are legit, so please don't lecture me on "pirating" copyrighted material. I would use the "Recovery CD" that came with my lappy, but it'd just install the same bloat that I'm trying to get rid of. I really don't care too much for the extras that come with Media Center, so I won't be missing that if I were to use the XP Home CD to install.

Yes, I know about the startup progs. I've disabled the ones that aren't necessary. But there are a LOT of progs scattered all over the computer. I'd uninstall them using the Add/Remove, but I don't want to take the time to do this. In addition to getting rid of the bloat, the reason I want to format the computer is to partition the hard drive. Having the lappy running on an unpartitioned 80gb HD just doesnt feel right to me.

Answer 1

it wouldn't work, each key is for each product.

Answer 2

The xp media center id wouldn't work with the xp home cd install. You can add and remove widnows component from the add/remove section of the control panel just click on the add remove windows components icon on the left.

Most of what is slowing your computer down are the items that are loaded each time your computer boots. You should run msconfig from the start>run menu and click on the startup tab. Uncheck everything other than your antivirus, and firewall. Do all this and you should be running as if you just did a clean install. Also run clean cache from http://buttuglysoftware.com/ to clear up your system cache.

Answer 3

Your xp home cd will work on your laptop.
You will need drivers for your laptop tho.
Many laptops come with recovery cd's plus a system cd. The system cd generally has the drivers on it.
You can also just leave your media center operating system and turn off anything you dont want to run by typing msconfig in the run box in start and then ticking the applications you dont want to run.