For sale: Windows XP Pro licensed

[buksida]

A client purchased this recently by mistake after realising his laptop already had a genuine edition pre-installed.

Windows XP Pro SP2
Genuine COA
Unopened
Receipt
__________
6,000 + VAT
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[Guess]

1. As a matter of interest how does this compare with WGA pricing and is it permissible to use it on more than one home PC at the same time.

2. I have got the WGA star and annoying message again after a recent upgrade of downloads was done. I am reluctant to fork out money because I was assured that XP was licensed when I bought the machine and the key was on a sticker attached to the machine. I got all the disks that were with the peripherals but no XP disks. I was told this was because it was downloaded from the Internet onto my machine and the key was all I need to to prove authenticity. Since then I have upgraded to SP1 and then SP2 which MS state are free. To keep me from being stuck without any CD to boot from in the event of a disk failure I bought an SP 2 disk from Saturkarn Square and have used it many times to add modules. Problems started when MS introduce their WGA program. Soon afterwards I got a program call runme.exe that got rid of the message and still allowed downloads. That is until yesterday. runme now has no effect.

Since I purchased the machine and XP the reseller has forgotten where they keep the details and all I get is mai mee and gualentee only 1 year. The guy who installed the PC and spoke English has long gone.

I am now stuck with two PCs running what MS consider is an illegal copy. All attempts to contact them have failed. They just do not reply.

Does anybody know a way round this or do I really have to pay for XP again. Vista is 2 years off being ready according to reliable sources and various web sites and I can not wait that long. I need an interim solution that will last until Vista is ready. I don't mind paying something for running 2 PCs on the same site bu I begrudge paying for everything again.

In both cases the XP is genuine but the key seems to have changed by the SP2 dodgy upgrade.
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[buksida]

You can check the authenticity of your version here:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/en/default.mspx

There are a couple of different options. Whenever you buy a machine that claims to have genuine software you should get the genuine CD's with it, if you don't then alarm bells should ring.

The easiest way to avoid getting the "blue star of death" is to simply turn off automatic updates and use a good third party firewall (not the M$ one).

Someone posted somewhere that they knew a way around the WGA problem, Google it and a number of solutions will come up, haven't tried any myself though.
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