XP home broken CD, and good CD-KEY?

Question

I'm building myself a new rig, with some pretty sweet gear, but I want to know about the OS.

See the thing is that I have bought Dell all my life, and as makes sense I have alot of Dell computers, when Dell sends a computer they give you a Dell disk fo the operating system, that only works in Dell systems!

So here's the problem, I have a valid XP home CD-KEY, but no way of installing it because I don't have any disks that are good (it is broken) and even if I could fix it it would still be a dell disk which only works in dell computers.

So now that you understand the situation, does anyone know how I could possibly install XP home without buying a new XP home and wasting all the money?

(Actually I have two non dell computers, and TWO good XP home CD-KEYs, and I would love to use them)

Well I don't know, but I am fairly sure that the keys are good XP keys. IE they will work on my other computers.

But about the iso image, how can I use that on a computer that doesn't have an operating system?

And I suppose I could burn it to a CD, but do you know where I can get one of these images? Are they availiable legally? Either way I am using them for a legal purpose.

Answer 1

Are the CD keys on the stickers on the Dell computer? If so, they will actually NOT work. If they are just regular Windows XP Home CD keys, then you can use any Windows XP Home CD to install it with. You can even download one off of the Internet (a CD image)...as long as you have a good key, any CD will work.