SP (XP)

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I have a legal copy of XP from the university I teach at (REALLY!!). The tech who installed windows must have been too lazy to use the correct code # and used one of the registration # floating around the internet. Now when I tried to install the SP it tells me my copy is pirated. Is there a way to fix this short of reinstalling XP?
Thanks

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Or it was the other way, and it was a legal copy that got turned lose in the wild by some one with connections with the school.

You will find that several site licenses from schools are lose in the wild. You will need to contact the school that received the copy from and get a NEW number. The tech support may be given information on how to upgrade SP1.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Technicaly, there are two ways to insert the new key: re-install WinXP upon itself from CD or run SYSPREP utility. Both of them will take approximate the same time (less than 30 minutes). But you must obtain the legal key first. After re-installing WinXP, apply SP1 patch.

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On the subject of inserting keys, here’s a scenario. I have my company’s enterprise key for WinXP but am building off of an IBM factory image that has WinXP on it. I’ve made the image the way I would like it but when I put in my sysprep file (with my company’s key) the setup process begins after shut down but indicates that the key is invalid. If I were to put in the WinXP key that came with this ThinkPad the sysprep runs fine…but I don’t want to use the key from IBM…I want to use the right one. Any ideas, besides the sysprep.inf, where I can change the Microsoft license key??? Too anxious to wait to talk to IBM on Monday. Thank you for any help!

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You are going to have to build the system with with CD and the code that are related. The two different CD’s require a different format to the code numbers and will NOT work with the other. These are the rules and you may not like it, but the NEW OS will NOT allow you to do what you want to do. There is ONLY one right one (code) and it is related to the CD.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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If you want to use the key obtained from Microsoft, you must use Installation CD from Microsoft or its copy from network drive. Build the new image from scratch (destroying all partitions on the hard drive), install drivers from IBM website (IBM ThinkPad support), then install your applications, prepare sysprep.inf file and run sysprep.

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Exactly. I’ve been doing that for some time. I just don’t want to install from scratch this time. When I roll out ThinkPads I always enjoy doing my final, golden master image that will be ghosted to thousands of notebooks from the factory image. I can duplicate what IBM does to the notebook and OS point for point but my versions never come out as well.

Thank you for your input.

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