Bo Berglund
November 4th 08, 09:33 PM
My mother has a Compac desktop PC that she bought a couple of years
ago at a garage sale. It came with XP-Pro already on (no service
packs).
I helped her to configure the Outlook Express mail client and all was
working Ok in her setup using a dialup modem to send/get email.
Last week she got cable Internet and the PC is now networked 24/7 and
I wanted to help her set up Windows Messenger so that she could chat
with her grandchildren.
But the messenger would not log in (requiring some kind of "passport")
and it failed to install said passport. Next I tried to install a new
MSN Messenger, but thta also failed. It claimed the operating system
was too old. So I decided to try Windows update to get it a bit better
updated.
Big surprise!
After a rather long time of getting extra update software the system
said it could not continue because the license key had been blocked!
Apparently the XP-Pro on that PC was not legitimate, even though I
believe that the Compac was shipped with Windows installed....
Anyway, now I would like to know if I can install XP-Pro SP2 from a
legitimate CD on top of the existig installation and keep all of the
settings we have set up?
Will there be issues because the underlying XP is unlicensed (I am
bringing in an unused license).
I would not like it to install a different system and lose the
existing installation we have done (even though it is basically just
OE 6 with the mail archive).
Any ideas?
--
Bo Berglund (Sweden)
ago at a garage sale. It came with XP-Pro already on (no service
packs).
I helped her to configure the Outlook Express mail client and all was
working Ok in her setup using a dialup modem to send/get email.
Last week she got cable Internet and the PC is now networked 24/7 and
I wanted to help her set up Windows Messenger so that she could chat
with her grandchildren.
But the messenger would not log in (requiring some kind of "passport")
and it failed to install said passport. Next I tried to install a new
MSN Messenger, but thta also failed. It claimed the operating system
was too old. So I decided to try Windows update to get it a bit better
updated.
Big surprise!
After a rather long time of getting extra update software the system
said it could not continue because the license key had been blocked!
Apparently the XP-Pro on that PC was not legitimate, even though I
believe that the Compac was shipped with Windows installed....
Anyway, now I would like to know if I can install XP-Pro SP2 from a
legitimate CD on top of the existig installation and keep all of the
settings we have set up?
Will there be issues because the underlying XP is unlicensed (I am
bringing in an unused license).
I would not like it to install a different system and lose the
existing installation we have done (even though it is basically just
OE 6 with the mail archive).
Any ideas?
--
Bo Berglund (Sweden)