I had a Dell desktop which got in the flood and is now trash.
I built a Pentium4 2.4 gig from spare parts. I wanted to use the Dell
operating reinstall cd for win XP on the new machine,but I get
"" FOR INSTALL ON A DELL COMPUTER ONLY!!'' Is there any way to get around this, or do I have to buy another copy of WIN XP?

Tom E-Mail at: nostalgicnova@peoplepc.com

I had a Dell desktop which got in the flood and is now trash.
I built a Pentium4 2.4 gig from spare parts. I wanted to use the Dell
operating reinstall cd for win XP on the new machine,but I get
"" FOR INSTALL ON A DELL COMPUTER ONLY!!'' Is there any way to get around this, or do I have to buy another copy of WIN XP?

Tom E-Mail at: nostalgicnova@peoplepc.com


hm... looks like Your WinXP is OEM :D if you wanna be right, you should to buy next OS. sorry.

If you have access to another machine with a CD/RW, you can copy the set up files from your OEM disk onto a blank CD and use it. (Discarding Dell's proprietary stuff. You will need to be sure you get all the .cab files and several others...(like setup.exe) I do not have a complete list of the files you need, but you can probably search the web and find one pretty easily.

I've run into this before and it really irks me that after you have paid for a piece of software, you can't use it as you wish! Computers do die, but you OWN the software too! UG!

as other people say the version of OS that comes with a dell computer is an OEM version and as such dies with the machine. If I were you I would buy a new hard drive, this allows you to get another copy of an OEM version, which save you a huge bunch of cash. In the UK, full XP-PRO is 269 pounds, the oem is 89 pounds. At some places I have seen you only need to buy a new fan and it allows you to buy an OEM version!