John

Just connect your PC to the internet and re-install XP. When it gets near the end of the install it will ask you if you want to activate. Say "yes" and everything should be OK. I just replaced the 40 Gb hard drive in my old Compaq laptop with a 250 and decided to reload from scratch rather than use an image from the old drive. XP activated just fine. I have a strange feeling that, as old as XP is, any build would activate OK. I don't think their system checks that close anymore on XP. I screwed up my new install twice, so really ended up activating three times in a matter of several hours and had no problem on any of the attempts. This particular copy of XP was originally installed on a now defunct desktop. I used it because it already had SP2 built into it, where as the laptop's OEM OS was only SP1. So it installed OK, even though it was originally activated for another machine. I think the original waiting period between installs on different machines was only 180 days - just enough to ensure that you weren't cranking out bootleg installs in a production environment.

Good luck !

Regards,

Ted

Last edited by tnicoson; 06/15/12 05:04 PM.