I've got an HP laptop with the 4-CD OEM installation. I've also got a desktop with a retail version of XP home. Is there any way to use the retail installation disk and the CD key from the OEM version to make the install? I know the product ID has OEM listed in it, but looking for ways around it so I don't have to use the 4-CD OEM automatic install of all the extraneous items.

thanks,

BJ

4 CD's ?!

huh what is there as bonus which fits on 4CDs ????

thats more then 6 times of XP itselfe

You should be able to use the OEM key with the retail disc of XP. Just install the retail copy of XP as usual and provide the OEM key.

I beleive he was reffering to the HP image discs. Those are crammed full of HP goodies.

I work for HP on Laptops
and the answer is NO!
because retail and OEM have different generated keys

XP will work under instalation no problem using retail,
but as long as you have proof of a XP purchase (on the bottom of your PC) it doesnt matter what key u use to install with

I haven't tried to install my XP CD on 2 different computers and activate it yet. I was under the impression that the activation process was to keep people from doing that very thing.

Are you saying that I could use my retail version key and install it on the laptop without repurcussion? Will M$ allow me to do that?

After all this, I decided to go out and pick up a copy of XP professional. I'm just trying to see if it's possible now. I found an article about the keys saying that the keys are specific to OEM or retail. The reason being that an OEM key has "OEM" in the key and a retail version has another code such as "225". The article talked about it being in a setupp.ini file. I never dug into it because I believe that they were talking about it being on the install CD and I didn't want to deal with making a copy of the CD and altering the files.

Anything you could add would be great. Thanks.

-BJ

All that matters to M$ is you having 2 licenses when installing on 2 PCs. But I do not think you can activate 2 WinXP installs on different PCs with the same productkey. Like you said that's the whole point of activation.

BUT you can change the productkey just for this purpose!!!!

Look here: HOW TO: Change the Product Key at the Time of Activation

4CDs plus the software which it installs. Its 1 CD for Windows and the others are just software and 1 is a driver disk!

OEM vs Retail

So thats a CD vs a Box?