Been given and old PC and need a bit of help with XP serial numbers :)
 

Ok, my brother dropped off my old mans PC a few days ago, it was given to him by my mother around a year ago and he has used it for bits and bobs.

It buggered up for him (he thought the HD had went) he had a go at fixing it and got nowhere, so blagged another PC from a friend for nothing :lol1:

Its an old Mesh Matrix 2600+XTC

After stripping it down and finding the best part of a human blocking the various fans up, i cleaned it all out, and got it up and running.

Now this machine is currently running a dodgy copy of Windows XP Pro, which is mind boggling because it has the bloody Windows XP Home sticker on the top of the unit with its product key :cuckoo:

What i suspect has happened, is that at some point, it has threw a fit, sobody has tried to fix it and did not know where the old man put the Mesh restore cd`s, so they just threw a snidey copy of windows on.

Now i would like to use its proper original XP Home product key and keep the machine legit, i tried downloading a copy of XP Home to use today, and it will not accept the serial number i have.

I am wondering if XP had various versions just for retailers?

The sticker looks like a legit MS sticker but says this on it.

"Windows XP Home Edition
Mesh Computers PLC"

Any reasonable thoughts before i sack it all off and just put Ubuntu on it?

If it was a retail machine, then there would have been either a key for each machine, or a block key for a number of machines (they were the numbers leaked for hooky installs)

given that MS no longer support XP (only last few updates), id say bung on a copy of pro ;)


Mart

Mart, i have the key for the machine, its on the genuine sticker on the top of the case :lol1:

The problem is, that the XP Home i downloaded today will not accept the key when attempting to install.

The version of XP Home i downloaded was supposed to be a retail version with service pack 3, maybe i should try an original version without the service packs?

ps. i dont see the point of putting a snidey copy of XP back on it, i would rather have a legit copy of Ubuntu tbh.

It's probably an XP Home OEM CD you need to download. Not the retail version. That's what the manufacturers use and what the key is generally for.

Ahh, never thought about the OEM editions.

Will scour the net for a download now, cheers!

Yeah, you 'll need the OEM copy not retail if there is a sticker on the case.

Just looked on the bottom of both lappys. it says which version of Xp / vista is installed

On one lappy its vista oem, on the other Dell xp home

so what the others are mirroring makes sense

Mart

Downloaded a version of OEM last night, but forgot to bring it to work with me :lol1:

Meh, i did have my Ubuntu 10.10 live CD with me, so i installed that instead :D
Runs sweet as a nut (posting from it now) not sure if i could get the tv tuner function of the graphics card working, but i am not so bothered about that.

Some of the stuff i found on the hard drives

44GB of downloaded movies :eek:
10GB of music, which now appears to be about 6GB after i deleted all the bloody duplicates, some of the folders were labeled as ITunes so i am assuming they have been paid for?

Most of it is a mix of my old mans Black Sabbath shoite, with some of my sisters Fallout Boy/hemical Romance (whoever they are)

I also found some saved letters that i wrote around 15 years back regarding an insurance claim on my Vauxhall Nova :lol1:

Totally removed Windows XP now from the machine, and that is how its staying :cool:

give the xp oem cd a try!

(coz i am in the same boat. i got xp pro cd but the key on the sticker wont work)

Its a bit late now, formatted both the hard drives and done a full install of Ubuntu.

To be honest i rate Ubuntu over XP on older machines as you can pretty much get away with not using a virus checker, and the old virus checkers do tend to cripple the older hardware.

This desktop is a 2ghz single core with an "uprated" 1gb of memory :D

I have removed the OEM product key sticker, stuck it into a dvd case with the copy of oem xp and i will test it out some other time.