My latest venture...

[timeshifter]

My dad's computer is running on Windows ME, and it's getting the crap beat out of it from spyware and such. He doesn't want to pay $200 to buy XP Home and install it on his machine... Wow...

First off, I can get XP Home for $100 at Wal-Mart... it's brilliant, isn't it?
Second, my family just got a new Dell Dimension 3000, and a nice little scheme popped into my head...

Take Dad's hard drive and plug it into the big machine upstairs. Copy all of his data into a folder on the big machine. Take his hard drive downstairs, plug it back in, and install XP from the disc that CAME WITH THE NEW COMPUTER!!!!! Has Dell totally lost it? I could install XP on a million machines with that disc! Either way, back to my story...

Once the install is complete (about an hour later... P3 900 MHz... phooey), take the new XP hard drive back upstairs and copy all of the stuff back on to it. Take hard drive downstairs, and presto chango! Dad has XP on his computer without paying anything or losing anything!

Do you like my scheme?


NOTE: Yes, I do have extra CAT5 cables to copy the data directly. I know, I'm so smart.

[ice_531]

One product ID per cd..... don't ya think you'll run into trouble when 2 pcs are running the same product id

Especially for online stuff, if the computer will never have internet access, then it'd be ok...there'd be no way of checking the p-id

[dglienna]

unless you load it on the slow computer, register it, load it upstairs, and call them claiming the computer downstairs was too: old, slow, ugly, whatever, and that you are know installing on a new machine (which you would be)
don't bother moving the hard disk. once it's registered, I don't think that you'll have problems again.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Not sure about XP home, but XP Pro has to be registered to even run. Every time you change the hardware in the computer significantly...like putting the drive in a new computer ....you have to re-register it. Once you have it running on two systems, have fun with the registration.

Go with Win2k

[Pino]

Not sure about XP home, but XP Pro has to be registered to even run. Every time you change the hardware in the computer significantly...like putting the drive in a new computer ....you have to re-register it. Once you have it running on two systems, have fun with the registration.

Go with Win2k

Xp home is the same you can do it easily online but if you dont 'activate' it then i think it just stops after 30 days

Pino

[szlamany]

DELL Recovery CD isn't like XP install CD's.

Plus it's not right anyway - go by the product.

[timeshifter]

Don't think I'll have any problems at all. The big computer upstairs that already has XP isn't online, and the CD describes itself as an "XP Installation CD"... Sounds pretty convenient...

[dglienna]

I agree. Buy 2 copies if you use 2 copies.