You're welcome.

Thanks for the update.

--

Volunteer J - MS-MVP
Digital Media Experience

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

=====================

Thanks to everyone for your replies, since I first posted this
message last night.

I managed to get a "real person" at Microsoft by calling the phone
number listed in http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=295539.
(Fortunately, for me it was before 9:00 PM Pacific time.)

I explained the situation to the first person, who checked the 25
character Product Key affixed to the Compaq machine. He then
escalated me to an Windows XP Activation support rep.

This rep asked me for both the 25 character Product Key on the Compaq
machine as well as the number shown in the Registered To field -- the
one that displays in Properties after right-clicking on the My
Computer icon. This number was the same as that which shows on my own
Dell E520: 76477-OEM-x x x x x x x - x x x x x.

Either the numbers verified my story -- or I just had an honest voice
-- but he believed me. :-

He had me go to the following page via Internet Explorer to bring up
the The Windows Product Key Update Tool:
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/sel...3-f178df022063.

I agreed to the I understand this tool will send the above
information to Microsoft message and then clicked on the Download
radio button. In the File Download dialog box, I clicked Run and the
application started.
It was a simple process: I inserted the 25 character Product Key from
the sticker on the Compaq machine and was instructed to re-boot. After
re-booting, the Microsoft tech had me click on Start | Run and type in
"oobe/msoobe /a" (without the quotation marks) to bring up the Windows
Activation screen. I clicked on the "Validate by Internet" choice and
received a message stating that Windows had been validated.

As the last step, the rep had me go to the
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/def...displaylang=en where I
clicked on the
Validate Windows radio button.

Everything is now kosher!

Alan



He then had me click on Start | Run. In the command window I typed
"oobe/msoobe /a" to bring up the Windows activation screen. In the
space where it says Enter Product Key if instructed

As expected
"Alan" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I had to do a clean XP Home installation today on an old Compaq
Presario 2500 laptop for a client of mine.

Because he had none of the Recovery or XP Installation CDs that came
with the machine, I called H-P to request a replacement set.
However, because the laptop is so old by their standards they had no
installation media that I could buy.

I told the H-P/Compaq rep that I have a Dell OEM Windows XP Home CD
that came with my own machine. He said that XP should install okay
using that -- which it did.

I'm now trying to register Windows XP using the 25 Character XP Code
on the bottom of the Compaq laptop. While I thought it MIGHT just
work over the Internet, it was flagged as being incorrect.

I then called the phone number listed and all I can get is an
automated voice response which tells me -- after I read the 54
character message code -- that the code is wrong and "I won't be
able to validate my installation right now."

Is there a phone number with a real person at Microsoft, who I can
call and activate this installation?

Thanks very much.

Alan