Can I reinstall XP Home using my Dell CD on a different computer?

[qwazzy]

Here's my story...


My girlfriend's laptop is 4 years old, and it's a Toshiba. XP has never been reinstalled on it, and it runs slow as hell. I know it also has to do with hardware, but I'm thinking that if I reinstall XP on her laptop it will be at least a bit faster.

Anyways...she doesn't have her XP CD from 4 years ago, and I have an XP Home CD from my old Dell. Can I just use that CD to reinstall XP on her laptop? I'll use her key from the sticker on the bottom of her laptop. It will be legal, right?

As far as I know, Dell only ships computers with OEM CDs, so I should be OK with doing this? Thanks for your replies.

 

[Guest]

Dell Windows XP CD's look for a Dell BIOS so I doubt it will work.

Grumpy

 

[itadakimasu]

I've used the green dell xp sp2 cd's on ibm's and gateway systems before.

if you have the COA license sticker then you own a copy of the software whether or not you have the cds...although i've seen several people even people at a dell store saying somebody would have to buy an entire new boxed xp and not just the media.

install with that key may work but you might have to activate over the phone w\ microsoft which only takes 5 minutes or so.

 

[comrade]

The only way to find out if it'll work is to go ahead and try it.

I've been using the Win XP Pro system disk that came with a Gateway computer I bought some years ago. I've built three computers since then and used the same CD to install XP on each of them.

I've never had a problem activating it over the internet except the first time and all they asked was if I was installing it on a second computer. I told them I had disassembled the old Gateway and sold as many of the parts as I could on Ebay. They just gave me a new 25 digit number to put in, and it worked. Since then I've installed it on two new computers and reinstalled it a few times on each one of those. Internet activation has always worked since the first phone call.

 

[4Ryan6]

@qwazzy

More than likely if the installation disk is a full install Microsoft XP Home OEM installation disk it will work, but first check the HDD of the laptop and make sure it isn't partitioned with a restore partition the runs a Ghost clone reinstall.

You may only be able to discover that through the CMOS setup and see if theres a restore boot function that you can enable that takes you to the reinstall feature on the HDD if it has one.

Some laptops have had that feature on them at least check because you may already have the OP/SYS reinstallation software already on the HDD.

 

[cowboyup6983]

try it more than likely yes. ive done this before which gateways and HP pcs. all OEM CD's look for their OWN BIOS, this is why lets say if you have a new DELL with Vista but want to install XP on it, and you use an older DELL XP CD it will install XP and not even asked for activation or registration.

good luck, even if that laptop of hers only has 256MB or RAM and a Celeron like my sisters, with a clean install of XP it still will work faster.

 

[ahmedazab27]

I have used it before on a few different computers. It worked fine but it does not install drivers. Make sure you download all the drivers before re-installing windows