I have a Dell system that is approximately 2 years old. Win XP Home came on the system and has been a good system... until a surge toasted the power supply and Motherboard. The system needs to be back up and running quickly so went and picked up an aftermarket motherboard (by a quality manufacturer) that would take the CPU and RAM just fine. Hardware is now back up and running and everything is peachy. The problem I am having is that Win XP is now asking to be activated. AND I can't activate it because the NIC drivers have yet to be installed (and can't get into Windows until it has been activated). My question is... if I reinstall Win XP from scratch using the dell XP cd that came with the computer and the COA that from the sticker on the case... will it work? OR will I need to call M$ and complain (or Dell for that matter). Per the OEM agreement, I am not asking to install the OS on a different system. All the hardware is exactly the same other than a failed power supply and mother board. The HDD, CPU, RAM all survived the power surge.