Woolmanj,

 

You say you are getting ready to do clean installs of Windows XP Home Upgrade?  If you are using the retail Microsoft Windows XP Home Upgrade CDs, the answer is yes.  Microsoft only allows two reinstallations of the retail version of Microsoft Windows XP (Home or Pro) on the same computer before you'll be required to contact Microsoft to activate XP.  There is no workaround other than purchasing an additional license.  

 

Dell, and 19 other major original equipment manufacturers, are permitted by Microsoft to pre-activate their XP installation disks.  Therefore, there is no activation required when installing XP on a Dell with a Dell Reinstallation CD for Windows XP (Home or Pro). 

 

And the answer to your other question is yes.

 

Tony

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the info, Tony.

 

Since reading what you said, I did a little homework. Rather than waste one of my two reinstallations of WinXP Home, I thought I would try a Repair using my Windows XP Upgrade disc. I assume it had to be a retail version as it came in a box with no piece of equipment. (I guess by definition, is it correct that all Windows Upgrade discs may have to be retail because it would be silly to send a Windows disc and a Windows upgrade disk with the same machine?). To be on the safe side, I decided to give it a practice run with a Dell WinXP Pro Reinstallation disk on one of my WinXP Pro latitudes.

 

The Repair process went off without a hitch, but I couldn't get Windows Update to install any updates except for the first one. I did not turn off my antivirus software, so I uninstalled my antivirus program, thinking that would be it and did a second Repair to no avail. I retried Windows Update several times as well as tried Repairing several more times with no effect.

 

I tried the Windows Update Troubleshooter which told me to reinstall 6 dll's at the command prompt reached by "Run". I was then successful in installing 81 updates. However, when I tried to run Windows Update again to get the rest of the updates, Windows Update again refused to install them. I turned my machine off for a couple of minutes and on rebooting, I did get Windows Update to install the rest of the updates.

 

Are Repairs as opposed to Reinstallations problematical? Should I assume that since I rarely hear any mention of people Repairing their installations, it is not worth to go through the trouble? Any idea what might have happened?

 

Thanks, Peter

 

 

Woolmanj,

 

Are Repair installs problematical?  Not in my opinion.  Usually when I do a clean install of Windows it's because a hard drive has failed or I'm setting up a new custom-built installation.  The Windows Update problem you describe occurs sometimes.  Windows Installer 3.1 and the Microsoft Genuine Advantage Validation tool have to be installed prior to more recent updates so you have to pretty much be patient and let Windows Update do its thing.

 

The real trick to Repair installs going smoothly is this.  The Windows XP CD needs to be the same type (Home or Pro) and version (currently SP2) as that which is already installed.  You cannot repair an XP Home installation with an XP Pro CD.  If you repair a SP2 installation with a SP1 or SP1a CD, then you've got to reinstall SP2 and all of its updates before everything works.  With older systems that shipped with original XP, XP SP1, and XP SP1a CDs we usually use that XP CD, a downloaded SP2 executable, and Autostreamer to create a SP2 installation CD. 

 

Likewise, on OEM systems we use OEM CDs to do clean installs and repair installs.  For example, we use Dell CDs to do clean or repair installs of Dell systems and HP CDs to do clean or repair installs of HP systems.  If the Dell PC Restore by Symantec Partition is still viable, we use it to do a clean install of XP if the drive's integrity is not in question.

 

Hope this information is of use.

 

Tony

Another point, before some reader thinks it takes hours and hours with Microsoft to get validated . . if you have to call, it takes about 6 mins . . it's easy and painless