MSDN - Subsequent Installations of XP on same machine.

Author

Subsequent Installations of XP on same machine.

Steve Wood

2005-10-17, 3:55 am

Short version:
As long as it's the same motherboard I can re-install XP as many times as
necessary with just one activation cost to get rid of that annoying popup.
Is this correct?

I expect to upgrade from my Pentium D 830 to an extreme edition to boost my
FSB from 800Mhz to 1067 Mhz sometime next year. Will it cost me another
activation?

Long Version:
I build my own computers and set up my development machine as a dual boot
with two hard drives...each containing a bootable installation. One of the
drives I keep relatively cleen so that I can build and package software which
I know is 100% compatible with any other XP installation. The other drive I
use for installing 3rd party software, i.e. non-microsoft products.

There is one thing that I've found to be certain in life...one of the
operating systems on one of the hard drives will develop a glitch and finally
become unusable. It can either be the clean drive...due to my hacking
something that I shouldn't...or the other drive from a 3rd party product
doing what it shouldn't. Instead of trying to figure out what exactly went
wrong I choose to just backup my user data from the faulty drive and reformat
and install a fresh copy of the OS.

My question is will it cost me an activation each time I re-install XP for
the same machine? My understanding is that as long as I'm installing XP on
the same machine and only using one copy at a time on it then it will just
cost me the one activation. Is that correct? Will I need to use up two
activations since I will have both hard drives in the computer at the same
time (even though just one copy of XP is in use at one time)?

I know I get 10 activations. But, from what I gather from the licensing and
from the answer to a similar question from Jonathan Maltz [Microsoft MVP -
Windows Server - IIS, Virtual PC] posted in this forum on 8/13/2005:

And to be clear, MSDN comes with "unlimited" licenses, but 10 different
machine activations

That as long as the machine is the same, then I won't need to activate
again. Or, will that annoying popup appear again so that I have click it to
activate XP, but internally Microsoft will not subtract an activation from my
subscription because it's the same machine as a previous activation?

Computer Guru

2005-10-17, 6:55 pm

yeah, your straight.
so long as both drives are installed at all times.
"Steve Wood" <SteveWood@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2056B9AD-317E-4F93-B3D1-10D00A72CC80@microsoft.com...
> Short version:
> As long as it's the same motherboard I can re-install XP as many times as
> necessary with just one activation cost to get rid of that annoying popup.
> Is this correct?
>
> I expect to upgrade from my Pentium D 830 to an extreme edition to boost
> my
> FSB from 800Mhz to 1067 Mhz sometime next year. Will it cost me another
> activation?
>
> Long Version:
> I build my own computers and set up my development machine as a dual boot
> with two hard drives...each containing a bootable installation. One of
> the
> drives I keep relatively cleen so that I can build and package software
> which
> I know is 100% compatible with any other XP installation. The other drive
> I
> use for installing 3rd party software, i.e. non-microsoft products.
>
> There is one thing that I've found to be certain in life...one of the
> operating systems on one of the hard drives will develop a glitch and
> finally
> become unusable. It can either be the clean drive...due to my hacking
> something that I shouldn't...or the other drive from a 3rd party product
> doing what it shouldn't. Instead of trying to figure out what exactly
> went
> wrong I choose to just backup my user data from the faulty drive and
> reformat
> and install a fresh copy of the OS.
>
> My question is will it cost me an activation each time I re-install XP for
> the same machine? My understanding is that as long as I'm installing XP
> on
> the same machine and only using one copy at a time on it then it will just
> cost me the one activation. Is that correct? Will I need to use up two
> activations since I will have both hard drives in the computer at the same
> time (even though just one copy of XP is in use at one time)?
>
> I know I get 10 activations. But, from what I gather from the licensing
> and
> from the answer to a similar question from Jonathan Maltz [Microsoft MVP -
> Windows Server - IIS, Virtual PC] posted in this forum on 8/13/2005:
>
> And to be clear, MSDN comes with "unlimited" licenses, but 10 different
> machine activations
>
> That as long as the machine is the same, then I won't need to activate
> again. Or, will that annoying popup appear again so that I have click it
> to
> activate XP, but internally Microsoft will not subtract an activation from
> my
> subscription because it's the same machine as a previous activation?
>

Steve Wood

2005-10-23, 6:56 pm

My question still is not answered.

Saying, "I'm straight so long as both drives are installed at all times"
does not answer the question, "Will it cost me an activation each time I
format and re-install XP?". Nor does it answer the question of will it cost
me 2 activiations to have a dual-boot system with both virtual or physical
drives containing an XP installation.

Thanks,
Steve

"Computer Guru" wrote:

> yeah, your straight.
> so long as both drives are installed at all times.
> "Steve Wood" <SteveWood@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:2056B9AD-317E-4F93-B3D1-10D00A72CC80@microsoft.com...
>
>
>

Sponsored Links