XP Product keys are not specific to individual CDs, Right?

Question

I have a dell dimension 3000 that I would like to replace motherboard and CPU by the end of the year. I bought it off of a 3rd party vendor 2 years ago and it did not come with the reinstall disk on CD (it works off a partition of the Hard Drive). I have a valid Product Key on the box.

I have seen dell xp home sp2 restore disks going for 20-30 on ebay. Can I use these disks and then register with my valid product key? I am thinking that as long as it is a dell restore disk that matches the version of xp on my dell, I will be ok.

I have read that when I replace my mobo, my system will probably not reboot because of the xp system check.

Answer 1

not true !
the product key is cd specific . if they are selling restoration disk on ebay they would have to also give you the key

Answer 2

If you have a Dell restore disk then you will have the product key for xp somewhere on a sticker on the system. When you replace the motherboard on a Dell system, you will have to do a bios update on the motherboard. go to the website the link I will gie you so you will have all the drivers that you need to reinstall them, but do this before you start with the motherboard, burn them to a cd or save them to a flas drive or disk. If the product key does not work call dell and they should give you a dummy key til y ou can contact Microsoft.

Answer 3

Sometimes the keys are version specific, but they shouldn't be tied to one CD... so you should be able to use 'any' CD with the same version of XP on it.

But if it's the same version on CD as your license key it should be fine. As long as it's also a Dell CD(in case Microsoft know that it's a Dell key and not a Dell OEM's version of XP) then there is no risk of Microsoft getting tricky about registering.

Your system will probably boot when you replace the mobo... but it may require immediate registration to get the full functionality of XP working.