XP help

Hi there
I was just wondering if there is a way you can tell a manufacture restore cd is just a version of windows XP. I currently have a HP revcovery cd which says Windows XP Operating System CD. But in fine print it says "contains software and drivers already installed". Yet I also have the HP drivers CD to go with it. I put the CD and it comes up with the XP installation.

I booted from the cd and "pretented" to install XP. It started by putting on drivers. Not sure if from the cd. Would these drivers be from the CD specific for HP computer they are from? Not sure on this one.

paul

 

Normally OEM Install discs only install on their motherboard and activate automatically (if its HP, Dell or some other big OEM).

About the "pretend" install... When an xp disc boots, it loads a bunch of drivers with the craziest names... but it hasn't installed anything! The install begins after you have formatted and selected a partition.

 

thanks... so theoretically I could use the CD to install XP on another machine? Do you if this would work?

 

Most of the time, yes. You would need the COA/Licence of the corresponding machines on hand for activation.

cheers ...

 

thanks... I might still wait and get a retail version off ebay or something. Just incase it is a computer specific cd.

 

That HP CD has loads of bloatware on it....and OEM serials are said to only work on that specific PC..!! It is mentioned on MSDN that the serials will only work for a specific PC, since the serial is normally hard-coded into the motherboard (since most people reactivate OSs by making an excuse of a crashed HDD), and it is piracy in a way, to install the OEM OS on a machine other than the machine it originally came with.... {There are loads of OS torrents with OEM serials, which install but don't activate}
You could be lucky if HP may have been lazy with your system , but the above is all fact....

 

No; that CD is locked to the machine it came with - that's part of Microsoft's royalty OEM licensing requirements. More likely than not, if you tried to install XP on anything other than exactly the same brand/model of computer it came with, you would get a warning error telling that the CD cannot be installed on the computer you're trying to install it onto.