sjthinkpader wrote:OEM XP disc doesn't work with the COA number on the bottom case. You need the Lenovo recovery disc.
Not true at all. A "major brand-name" vendor's Windows OEM key will work with the generic Windows OEM install CD. I've done it many, many times before.
Now, when you use the official restore discs from your vendor, you usually are not even required to enter in a product key during installation/restore. That is because the copy of Windows that gets installed by these restore discs is already "pre-keyed" with a valid OEM key. That's right: every Dell or Lenovo or HP or whatever big-brand-name computer with the same version of Windows on it is using the same key as all the other machines form that vendor, and it's not the one printed on the bottom of the computer! These are "special" OEM keys that will ALSO work if you punch them in during Windows installation from a generic OEM CD. What makes them special is that these keys are "bound" to a specific vendor via a BIOS signature; if the OEM version of Windows is installed on a Lenovo computer with Lenovo's version of this kind of key, Windows will not require activation. If the BIOS signature doesn't check out, Windows will still install (since it is a valid key for XP Home OEM or XP Pro OEM or whatever version of Windows OEM it was made for), but it will ask you to activate, and (in theory) it won't activate with that key if you try.
This system was made so that vendors wouldn't have to individually install and activate a copy of Windows with a unique key for every computer that they build and sell (how tedious would that be at the volume level that a company like Lenovo operates at!). The use of this system, though, also means that the key printed on the COA on the bottom of your Lenovo laptop
has never been used. It is there because Microsoft requires each computer with Genuine Windows to have a valid COA with a unique product key in order to stifle the potential for counterfeit versions of Windows to show up on OEM hardware. The big manufacturers are not exempted from this policy.
The OEM key on the COA on the bottom of a big vendor's PC is just as valid as a generic OEM key, from Windows XP OEM Setup's perspective. You can use this key to install a generic copy of Windows XP OEM. This, however, does not mean that you won't encounter difficulties while activating it. Microsoft knows that other people know that the keys that come with these computers have never been activated, and it does have ways of tracking which OEM keys were assigned to the vendors that also have been assigned a special "BIOS signature non-activated OEM key." There have been rumors to the effect that automatic on-line activation will not work with these keys and that you will be forced to call Microsoft to get them to activate, because people have tried to use these keys to install and activate a second copy of Windows on another computer which does not have a license purchased for it (free, spare OEM key!). In reality, I'd say that, based on my own experience, half the time on-line activation works just fine, and the other half of the time I need to call. But I've never been denied activation altogether.
Most of the time, if I am doing a Windows re-install on a big-name vendor's computer for someone and I am not using the restore disc to do it, and if I know that the vendor in question has a BIOS-linked product key, I will hunt that key down and use it during installation with a
Generic Windows XP OEM Install disc instead of the key printed on the COA stuck to the computer. This actually works just fine and saves me the hassle of activation. It also proves that the logic for decoding an OEM key and checking it against the BIOS signature is the SAME across ALL versions of WinXP OEM, and is even included in the generic OEM install disc; you don't have to have a Dell WinXP install disc, for example, in order to use the Dell BIOS-checked OEM product key and have Windows spare you from requiring activation.
If you have access to a computer by that vendor running the same version of XP on it that you wish to install (Home, Pro, Media Center, Tablet), look for an i386 directory and peer into the files named UNATTEND.TXT or WINNT.SIF. The BIOS-linked key will be listed in one of those files. If BOTH files exist, the key in WINNT.SIF takes precedence and is the correct one to use.
-- Nathan
