Windows XP Home Edition CD Key

Dennis wrote:

My nephew bought a used PC. It came with Windows XP home edition. He
has the disk but the CD key was hand written on a piece of paper with
one digit missing from the first set. Any way of finding out what that
digit might be?

There are a couple ways WinXP Home Edition could have got on the PC.

1) If you buy a Dell/HP/Gateway etc., the hard drive has a copy. There
is a restore feature, which can be used to reinstall the OS from a
hidden partition on the hard drive. That copy of the OS is "branded OEM"
and comes with a license key suited to bulk installation.

That key is *not* the same as the key printed on the sticker affixed
to the new PC. If you buy a used computer from another end user, and they
erased the hard drive completely (no OS), the sticker affixed to the
computer would have a different number on it. If you install using
an OEM Home CD, and use that sticker key, then after activation that should
work as well. As a result, not losing the sticker is important. On some
laptops, they had the presence of mind to locate that sticker in the
battery bay, to protect it from external wear and tear. But most of the
time, the sticker is put into a place where it can be rubbed enough, that
the key is obliterated.

If you use a utility to retrieve the key, the key could be the "bulk" key
or it could be the "sticker" key, depending on whether the software is
perfectly original, or was installed separately due to a hard drive failure.

2) Someone buys a retail WinXP Home edition CD and installs it. In
that case, there is only one key value. Such a situation might
happen if the computer had Win98 on it, and the user wanted to
cheaply upgrade to WinXP.

Retrieving the "bulk" key, wouldn't be of much value to you. Whereas
the "sticker" key or the key that came with the retail CD, would be
useful for reinstallation. When you install the OS, having purchased
WinXP, it should come with a COA (certificate of authenticity) and
a sticker that can be affixed to the PC. That lessens the risk that
the key will be lost.

Or stated in another way, there is no excuse for "writing the key
on a piece of paper". Such an action implies the key is a corporate
key lifted from somewhere. Which might even be flagged when you
attempt to reuse it. People will do just about anything when
selling a used computer. You see, the thing is, some idiot big corporations,
when discarding old inventory, they remove the OS and sell
the computer without a sticker. A reseller, having acquired such machines
for resale, gets a big price break on them, but that reseller is then
faced with putting a legit OS on the machine. And that's when they'll
do unethical things to move the purchase forward.

There should not be any web sites to "validate" a key, because if
such a site existed, it would be brute force abused by people attempting
to "make" their own license keys. So it's pretty difficult to detect
an issue before using the key. But the Microsoft activation step,
if a license key has been flagged, will certainly tell you if the
key has been invalidated.

By all means, use a utility to recover the key. Compare to the value
on the paper. It might not match if the original bulk key was
being used (a key that doesn't require activation). If you do attempt
to reinstall, if I was doing it, I'd use a separate disk drive, preserving
the original disk until it was clear everything was fine with the new install.
You can revert to the old drive if there is an issue, until that issue
is resolved. If there is a risk the key is not legit, then you'll find
out at activation time.

Paul