Borrow someone's install disk.
Install it and when it asks for the reg code, type in a phony code.
You will eventually get a message saying this is not a legal copy.
You'll then be given an opportunity to purchase a legal copy from Microsoft.
This happened to me and I now have a legal copy of XP Pro. They gave me the
correct code and mailed me the disk.

M.


"Robbie Hatley" wrote in message
...

An anonymous coward wrote:

Bite the bullet and buy a new computer with Windows 7.
That way you'll have the latest hardware and software.

Firstly, I don't do "new computers"; I build my own.

Secondly, I don't do pre-installed OSes; I install my own
using install CDs. Avoids a whole plethora of problems.

Thirdly, I couldn't afford a "new computer" even if I wanted
to buy one, which I don't.

In short, I'm sorry, but your "answer" does not come even
remotely close to answering anything I actually asked, so
i'll repeat:

Greetings, group. This is my first post to this group.
I've been using Windows 2000 since shortly after it came out
(late 2000). It's met all my needs until recently. But
lately, I've been running into problems as Microsoft,
software manufacturers, ISPs, etc are all phasing-out
support for Win2K.

SO, I'm considering moving to Windows-XP.

I have two questions:

Firstly, what are the options for obtaining XP install CDs
these days? I've heard MS has stopped producing them. So
we have to get them from places that still have them in stock?
Or are there other options?

Secondly, does XP require manually setting an entry in the
registry in order to use HD partitions over 137GB, as with Win2K?
Or is XP smart enough to automatically use the correct LBA type
(24bit or 48bit) based on HD size? (I'm looking to avoid any
repeats of an incident which occurred about a year ago in which
thousands of files on my computer were destroyed because
registry entry "EnableBigLBA" got reset to 0 on a clean
reinstall of Win2K.)

--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
lonewolf at well dot com
www dot well dot com slant tilde lonewolf slant