I have a Pentium 4 PC which I found dumped in the street (with some added components from another PC also found dumped) that I am setting up as a second PC (largely just for the feeling of getting something for nothing, and as a learning exercise, to be honest).
It works, but trouble is its absolutely riddled with malware, trojans, key loggers, adware, DNS redirectors... (AVG found loads, then Spybot S&D found still more and ad aware found still another lot). Its 'quarantined' at the moment. Decided best to do a complete reformat and reinstall (it has XP) before connecting it to the net.
Both its HD and the one from the second PC I found appeared to have vast amounts of personal data on them, which I deleted (mostly) unread. Surprises me how little concern for security some people have.
Anyway, my question is the following...
It has an original windows XP OEM serial sticker on the case. Does this mean its legal for me to reinstall windows from my existing XP SP2 disk? More to the point, will it work, using a XP SP2 disk to reinstall if the sticker is for original XP, not XP SP2? Both are Home edition OEM. I don't want to wipe out the existing windows and THEN find I can't validate the new install.
- just noticed my main machine's sticker doesn't say anything about SP2, so presumably an XP key is an XP key, regardless of which edition it is, therefore it will work, right?
It works, but trouble is its absolutely riddled with malware, trojans, key loggers, adware, DNS redirectors... (AVG found loads, then Spybot S&D found still more and ad aware found still another lot). Its 'quarantined' at the moment. Decided best to do a complete reformat and reinstall (it has XP) before connecting it to the net.
Both its HD and the one from the second PC I found appeared to have vast amounts of personal data on them, which I deleted (mostly) unread. Surprises me how little concern for security some people have.
Anyway, my question is the following...
It has an original windows XP OEM serial sticker on the case. Does this mean its legal for me to reinstall windows from my existing XP SP2 disk? More to the point, will it work, using a XP SP2 disk to reinstall if the sticker is for original XP, not XP SP2? Both are Home edition OEM. I don't want to wipe out the existing windows and THEN find I can't validate the new install.
- just noticed my main machine's sticker doesn't say anything about SP2, so presumably an XP key is an XP key, regardless of which edition it is, therefore it will work, right?
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