Obtaining an XP Home disc

[dparm]

My Compaq, in grand HP tradition, did NOT come with any sort of Windows XP disc. You can order a "recovery kit", but that is basically a single DVD with XP and all the other pre-bundled software (several gigabytes worth).

Frankly, when I swap drives, I do not want all of the extra software reinstalled. While I do officially own Windows XP Home (by purchasing the computer), and it has a valid license key sticker on the machine, how can I get an XP Home disc? Is there anything in the EULA that states I am entitled to a disc?

Thanks in advance.

[jharriso]

As far as I understand the licensing agreements, if you have a valid license for home, it doesn't matter where it's actually installed from. So, if a friend has a "clean" XP home disc, you can use it as your install media, just using your license.

That would be totally legal, as far as I know.

It's pretty much the same thing as when OSCR bought the Adobe CS2 suite, the actual media was $25 or so, but the licenses cost much much more.

[stoecker]

Microsoft will sell you a xp disc with no key for around $30 then you should be able to just use the key that came with your comp.

[dparm]

Josh, that's what I thought too. I was apprehensive to do it, partially because I don't want men with shotguns appearing on my doorstep.

[abudhu]

Yes, this should be legal. As long, as you are not using the XP CD to install on a different computer you are golden. The XP Licencing, and OEM licence keys are bound to the computer. So, you couldn't use your XP HOME CD+Key on any other computer but that one.

[manfesto]

FWIW, the matter (in my personal experience) is not that trivial.

New Dell computers ship with an XP install disc (that's awfully nice of them), and that is the ONLY XP install disc they will boot/install from. Trying to reinstall XP on my friend's computer was pretty hellish because of this - I have a few XP install discs I've customized the hell out of (using NLite) that have installed just fine on a half dozen other computers (four of which I had a hand in building, two of which were prebuilt from Compaq), but after the initial copying of files to the drive, the Dell refused to continue the installation process (I also tried the original XP install disc, to no avail). The only install disc it liked was its own (then again, it could just be Dell - they're so proprietary you can't even change out PSUs).

As far as other brands go, in my experience, the OEM keys printed on the sticker on the side of the case rarely work when installing from any disc besides the original as well (this one isn't just me - I had this problem on my friend's Compaq (I wanted to do a clean install from my nLite disc, but the OEM key didn't take), and if you're a listener to the podcast TWiT (This Week in Tech) months ago Kevin Rose ran into the same problem trying to do a clean install of XP Pro on his IBM laptop), but YMMV. I'd say if you're an engineering student, do what I did - sign up for the MSDN Academic Alliance and get XP Pro for free (not to mention Win98, .NET dev stuff, Server 2003, etc.).