Are hardware changes allowed pre XP activation?

[Jazzatola]

I'm about to build a new system and to make things as easy as possible I plan to put it together bit by bit - get things running with the minimal set of components and then add each extra component in turn to make troubleshooting any issues that much easier. So at first it'll just be a mobo, cpu, memory, gpu and hard drive. Then I'll add in extra memory, another drive, sound card, etc.

My question is, what effect will this have on XP activation? Are hardware changes an issue during the grace period before XP activation is required or is the machine profile locked down during installation?

Thanks!

 

[bruceb]

It will probably work as long as you make the changes before you activate it
And if it does complain, just call ms & if they ask, say you got some bad
hardware .. it is a new build, so some problems are expected