but my point was if you can get into the Ms oobe timer you can reset the activation and input a new key, but if youre locked in install, youre most likely screwed as its a registry key.

I wouldnt waste your time messing around with it. However, my new HP box accepted my old windows key just fine. so just format

I'm not putting it on a new HP box, a new custom box

...anyway... I found the solution I believe:

http://www.easydesksoftware.com/recovery.htm#XP

Cheers

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Send my love to the voices in your head.

The restore disk is essentially an XP Home disk. The only thing that will happen when you install the stuff from that disk onto her newer comp is there will be a nice hp logo in the my computer properties. But microsoft may have some beef about that. Is what I do when I upgrade my computer significantly (new mobo) I call them up with my key, they look in their key database for that key and they get a print out of your system requirements. If you can give them enough information about what your system was like theyll just delete the signature they have of your computer then when you go to reinstall and reactivate it will work like a new activation and install. Thats my $0.02 anyways.

Try reformatting the HD clean. Remove any HP proprietary crap.


[[[smoke]]]

i think those cd that came with the machine are lock to the computers bios to make sure u cant borrow it to someone else machine unless they are the same brand and type. dell does that....dammmm recovery os cds

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