It's common for someone to buy or be given an old computer that has had the drive wiped or just replaced. It originally shipped with some form of XP when new but now that installation is gone and as usual the restore disks (if there ever were any) are gone too.

I've seen elsewhere on this forum that if the new owner does have another disk of the same level of XP available that they can still do a re-install and can re-use the original product key that is on the sticker attached to the computer (with maybe a phone call to M$ to get it re-activated).


What hasn't been clear to me is would that included using an upgrade version of XP for the re-install on a computer that came with XP?

It may seem like a stupid question but I do remember that if you had an upgrade version of W98 then you still had everything you needed if you simply navigated to the W98 folder on the CD and ran OEMSETUP.EXE (or something to that effect).

looking forward to some enlightenment,
Jamnar

Hi there and welcome to the site,

You will need a qualifying previous version of Windows installed already on the hard drive to use an XP upgrade CD. It isn't possible to use an upgrade cd for a clean install.

The key word here is UPGRADE. In order to install an upgrade, you first have to have an operating system installed. For example, if you have W95 installed, then you could ungrade to W98 (using an upgrade version of W98 CD).

The only way to install Windows from scratch is to have a FULL version of Windows. This applies to any version of Windows including Vista.

OK, yes, there would have to be available a second disk with W98 or ME or 2000 to do an initial install. Could the XP upgrade disk then be used to upgrade the computer to XP using the original XP product key that is on the actual computer?

In other words, are the OEM product keys that come with preinstalled versions of XP (and thus tied to that piece of hardware they shipped with) usable with an upgrade version of an XP install disk?