** John Hunt <johnrhunt@???> [2007-01-26 09:10]:
> They don't, that's what we do at Soton Uni. There's one key and one
> iso for all the XP pro installs there.
** end quote [John Hunt]
Interesting, I've just had to reinstall my Windows XP Pro installation
and did so with what I assumed was the same key. When it came to the
validation stage it failed telling me that the key was invalid. After a
good deal of time spent trying to work through it with the Microsoft
registration people (thank goodness it is freephone!) they told me I
would have to contact tech support. Before doing this I played a hunch
and did a quick Google to find a utility to dig out the Windows key from
my other XP Pro installation. It appears that I installed that with the
same key by mistake. Anyway, I dug out another copy and that installed
fine.
Well fine here is referring to the actual install process accepting the
key. The machine still crashes frequently and I've only got the OS and
AV software on there so far. At one point it crashed during a Windows a
driver install and that killed the install completely. I booted off the
XP Pro CD again to sort out the repair and was told that they install
key had been used too many times, or the hardware had changed too much
(or whatever the exact wording is). That was totally inaccurate since
this was the second use of the key ever (it had just come out of a
sealed box) and the hardware hadn't changed at all, I'd not even had the
side of the case off. I'd only tried to install the new driver since
installing!
Oh the joys of Windows :(
--
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. |
http://www.aptanet.com/
