Windows XP Activation adventures
My XP server has been unable to get updates from Microsoft for a while and I finally decided to fix it. I learned a lot on the way about how Windows is licensed and distributed. For those of you who are interested, here’s what I learned.
I got a computer from Craig’s List a few years ago. It’s a Dell Dimension 5150. Not much of a workhorse or anything, but it suits my needs as a server for work stuff. It came with an XP Home COA and XP Pro loaded on it and the guy who sold me the computer gave me an install disc he had made. At the time I didn’t care much about where the license had come from - I just knew that Windows XP Professional was working and allowing me to use the computer as a server.
A while ago, Microsoft got on this “Genuine” kick. And when I was doing a WindowsUpdate, I got yelled at saying that the copy of Windows was not genuine. Not that I was too surprised but I was a little annoyed that now the server wasn’t really in a state to be rebuilt. (For the record, I like to rebuild my laptop - my client computer - every couple of years. But the server has stuff on it that doesn’t lend itself to being wiped out and reinstalled frequently.) So I figured I’d soldier on and try some hacks to get it to authorize. After all, I had a Windows XP Home Certificate Of Authenticity (COA) so the computer was licensed to run some form of XP. In other words, I felt like I was in the right in practical terms even if there were technical barriers to convincing Microsoft of that.
Yes, I know that XP Pro and XP Home are different licenses. I had originally tried to get an upgrade from XP Home to XP Pro but there’s no such thing. The only option is to buy XP Pro all new and the last thing I wanted to do was throw a few hundred dollars at Microsoft for a minor tweak. I think this is the kind of idiotic corporate thinking that makes people try to steal from Microsoft. If M$ had offered me a $40 or $50 upgrade option, I would have done it and they would have had made money from me. Instead, they just made me mad with no upgrade option and I needed to find another way.
I experimented with some of the “cracks”. Not to impressive really. They might have worked briefly but at that point, your computer is always sort of on the edge. And trolling around in the dark alleys of the Internet looking for these kinds of fixes always leaving you feeling like your computer needs a bath afterward. So I just decided to ignore the problem for a while and see what happened.
Now, over a year later, I was getting annoyed I couldn’t get updates, including SP3. And I still felt like there was a good solution out there. I decided I’d get an XP Pro license but the licenses on eBay were still pretty pricey for the retail version. And the OEM version had this peculiar quirk that you couldn’t move the license after it was installed once. It seemed silly to buy a new product key that couldn’t move to a new system when the system it is being installed on is hardly new.
So then I got the idea that I’d get another old Dell computer that had an XP Pro COA and as a bonus, I’d be able to set up a computer for household use. The computer I already had would get the XP Pro license from the new computer and the new computer would get the XP Home license from the computer I already had. I found a perfect computer on Craig’s List: a Dell SX260 ultra compact with an XP Pro COA. No hard drive or RAM or power supply, but those were fixable through what I had lying around and an eBay purchase or two.
So I started planning for the new computer by getting the hard drive ready (a laptop drive is what fits the SX260) and reading up on how to transfer a COA. I found info about how to change the product key (link1 link2) but I also found a number of sites claiming that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. It seems OEM versions aren’t just sold by the smaller system builders but that Dell’s computers come shipped with OEM versions of XP too. And according to Microsoft’s EULA for OEM Windows XP Professional:
THIS LICENSE MAY NOT BE SHARED, TRANSFERRED TO OR USED CONCURRENTLY ON DIFFERENT COMPUTERS. The SOFTWARE is licensed with the HARDWARE as a single integrated product and may only be used with the HARDWARE.
(Two other helpful links: link1 link2)
Okay, so that’s the legal bits. But what is actually possible? The fact that I’m not supposed to be able to transfer software around doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t. I called Microsoft Activation and asked them. The guy who answered had music playing in the background and didn’t seem too interested in my question - he turfed me off to Support who weren’t open at the late hour I was calling him. So the next morning I tried Microsoft Customer Service (800.936.5700). They did understand my question and the woman was nice about telling me that it was a question better directed to Dell (”they can decide whether to allow you to swap computers”) and gave me their number. A call to Dell (888.560.8324) and navigating their phone tree finally connected me to a woman named May who told me that I couldn’t swap licenses, then that I could and it would just work without needing to enter any product key, and then eventually agreed to check to be sure. She hung up on me. So I called back and discovered that May hadn’t entered any of my info into their system so I had to start all over. Asha was the new support person’s name and she was actually really nice but it did take a good long time to get my question across. She agreed that she needed to check so she put me on hold to check and did not hang up on me. When she came back she said that the info I had gotten from May earlier was correct. I was still somewhat surprised so I pressed for certainty and she said she’d get somebody else on the line to help out. The next guy on the line, Brett, at first seemed like he wanted to sell me a computer and sounded disappointed that I was going to be buying one from Craig’s List. He also took a while to understand what I wanted to do (why is swapping licenses between two computers so hard to understand!?) and then eventually agreed with the consensus thus far that it would just work. But he said he’d look into it to confirm and call me back. He never did.
Next I called the guy from whom I was supposed to be buying the computer and explained the situation. He was very nice and even suggested that the Dell consensus that it would just work was his experience too. That was comforting because up until now the people at Dell were talking about theory but had no experience trying it.
So I decided to give it a shot. But I couldn’t risk wiping out the computer which a new install would obviously do. So I took the computer apart and temporarily swapped in an extra hard drive. I first tried installing XP Home on the drive and it worked fine; this result was expected since it was an XP Home computer but was still somewhat surprising since the install never asked for the XP Home key that was on the COA on the box. Next, I wiped the drive again and installed XP Pro. Again, it installed fine, showed that it was activated, and still never asked for the product key. I used RJL’s Windows Product Key Viewer to check on what product key was installed. It was not the one on the COA sticker. Which I guess isn’t that surprising since it would have no way of knowing what was on the sticker (it’s not like the COA sticker is electrically connected to any hardware - it’s just a sticker!).
Okay, so at this point, I’ve validated that I could install XP Pro on the computer and that it would somehow just work even though the system was originally licensed for XP Home. (Nice that the Dell support people’s theory was correct though it was still better to hear from somebody that had actually tried it.) But why would the installs I did for the test work while the only install that mattered (the one currently on the computer) didn’t work? Both installs I did for testing used Dell Reinstallation CDs. Those are CDs that come with Dell computers for reinstalling the OS. The Dell Reinstallation CDs only work on Dell computers and apparently work with something in the BIOS. And the Product Keys are specific to the channel (Retail, OEM, Volume) of the OS installed. Therefore, a Dell OEM key is only going to work with an install done with a Dell Reinstallation CD. And the install that was done originally on my server was clearly not done with a Dell Reinstallation CD which is why my Dell OEM Product Key wouldn’t work (not because it was XP Home vs. XP Pro). So if I had done the OS reinstall using the Dell CD way back when I first got the server, I wouldn’t have had any problems.
Great. But that’s cold comfort at this point. What do I do about the existing install that I definitely do not want to wipe? Well, it may have been a little risky, but I followed some more ‘net advice and did a repair using the Dell CD. The trick is to not start with a repair, but to get through the license acceptance page and then select the existing installation to do the repair. It took a long time and I started to worry that I had wiped everything out. But my patience was rewarded. I got an install of Windows XP that seemed all new except for all my stuff was exactly where I had left it and still worked. Only the OS stuff had changed. And while that meant I had to start all over with Windows Update, it was probably for the best anyway because SP3 came through as the first thing to get and then I only got the updates since SP3 rather than starting with updates on top of SP2.
[For extra credit, I tried another test too. I stuffed the spare laptop drive in my XP Home licensed Dell laptop and put in the Dell reinstall CD for Vista Home Premium. That worked too! No activation issues there either. The fact that you could put XP Pro on a system that started with XP Home was a little surprising but the fact that it worked with Vista too was even more surprising. I don't plan to use Vista on that laptop but it's cool to know it would work.]
So there are a couple of morals to the story. First, installation CDs matter and it’s important to use an install CD that matches the product key you are going to use. Second, product keys mysteriously appear when using a Dell Reinstallation CD and don’t necessarily correspond to the product key on the box. Third, Dell Reinstallation CDs can be used on different systems than the ones they came with and do not appear to have any restriction on activation. And fourth, you will occasionally find great info from surprising sources like a guy on Craig’s List who knows he’s no longer talking to a buyer but wants to help anyway.
And even though this process took way longer than I would have liked, I still feel good about not sending more money Microsoft’s way unnecessarily. Think about all the computers that have been discarded and dismembered. Obviously many of them contained obsolete OSes but many of them were replaced with newer computers running the same OS. The resulting hardware churn only activates more Windows licenses and the ones that were trashed with the hardware are just wasted. It’s funny to me that our society’s propensity for physical consumption is also reflected in the associated intangibles like a software license. Although intangible waste doesn’t fill up any landfills, it does needlessly enrich the likes of Microsoft.