Xp Home Copy legal or not.

Hi.

I just bought an Hi-Grade brand laptop, and it has Windows Xp Home Edition, Pre installed.

It has the licence serial sticker on the bottom of the laptop, but it did not come with a software disk.

what i want to know, is it legal for me to get a copy of Xp Home edition off a friend to use to re-install my laptop or not.

thanks.

John.

 

If you already got the licence, I dont see why not you can borrow your friend's cd.

JC

 

as long as you have that COA underneath your laptop then it is legal to have the said windows installed. You can probably use another windows xp home edition installer and then use a key changer to change the key to the serial thats written in your COA (keeping his serial would be illegal).

 

Most retail cds wont accept an OEM serial number on install. If you purchased your laptop new and OEM there should be a utility or program to make a recovery disk, this will include the Windows OS, drivers, and ARRRGG! the bloatware that comes pre-installed. Is what I would do, and I learned here from other posters is to remove all your bloatware and programs that your not going to use and just use a program like Norton Ghost or Acronis Disk Image to make a carbon copy of your disk, and use it as a restore. Either way hope we could help.

 

you'll need a copy of the right cd, namely home or pro, sp1 or sp2 and oem or retail. all this info should be on your sticker. You can bit torrent a copy of the right cd most likely, perfectly legal if you use your own product key

 

I rang hi-grade the manufacturer of my laptop and asked where my Xp home cd was.

they told me for about a year and a half they had stopped supplying new laptops with an XP disk and instead install all the software in a restore partition.

they also said that another reason they do not supply an Xp disk is because people were installing on more that one PC.

is their a way of backing up my restore partition to an DVD, it is made with a program called pc-angel.

or does anybody know were i could download a copy of xp home sp2, as i said before i have licence serial sticker on the bottom of the laptop.

thanks.

John.

 

Out of curiousity, who is your laptop manufacturer? Reason I am asking is because depending on who it is, you can get an XP disc from them.

You can also make your own using the i386 method - There should be a few threads on that around here as well as google will bring up a ton of information on how to make your own disc using your own folders.

 

as i said in post 4, it is a re-branded laptop by a company called h-grade.

the laptop itself uses an mitac 8615 chassy with an via P4M890 chipset.

I rang the manufacture if you read my post.

thanks.

John.

 

Interesting, I used to have a hi-grade laptop, a P4 730 or 830 i think it was, Ultinote M9000? Mine had no xp cd either just a drivers cd. I did re-install windows on it (I had to as the hard drive died and i replaced it) just fine with the right disc. I forget which version of windows it had but it'll install ok with the right disc.

 

This topic describes a little more about the i386 method. It should still apply (since it is all the same software) to your situation.

Good luck!

 

i purchased the same laptop about 18 months ago and tried restoring it within about a month and your right what you say about there being a partition which it is supposed to be backed up to but when i tried it didnt work so i rang hi-grade and explained this so they sent me a disc in the post with the back up on