Will this be a problem

[Goobieheadtoo]

I have a friend that wants a computer to e-mail and chat with her grandchildren. She bought an old HP from a coworker's sister and now it doesn't boot, in fact nothing happens. I think it may be the motherboard, her husband opened and "fiddled around with it". I will be building them one soon using the old 30gig HD, floppy and cd drive. I'll use a Celeron, MSI mb, 512 mb Corsair ram, ATI 9600 vga and I have an old case with 420 watt psu. The previous owners had bought win xp upgrade and installed over the win 98. We have the original 98 disc and the legit xp upgrade disc and COA. I know that xp is tied to the motherboard and if that fails you sometimes have to call India to get a new product key. Now my question, if the original owner registered the OS, can we use it now, is it ok to "sell" xp, along with computer. I know you are not "buying" but leasing it. Do we have to use the previous owners name? Will this be a problem, we really don't want to have to pay for another licence. One more question, the xp upgrade does not have sp1 or sp2, I have an oem disc that I used on my comp. Can I use it to install on their HD and just use their product key. I am only trying to make things faster and simplier. Any suggestion to make this easier would be great. Thanks.

 

[halw]

Deep Six windows and load a linux distro. Xandros and SimplyMepis are very windows like and can be downloaded for little or nothing.

No problems with calling India then.

 

[ForumMaster]

Originally posted by: halw
Deep Six windows and load a linux distro. Xandros and SimplyMepis are very windows like and can be downloaded for little or nothing.

No problems with calling India then.

too true.

 

[firewall]

Originally posted by: halw
Deep Six windows and load a linux distro. Xandros and SimplyMepis are very windows like and can be downloaded for little or nothing.

No problems with calling India then.

If it's just email and chatting, why not go with builtin graphics? It will easily get the job done and the money for the GPU would be saved. If WinXP is ok, use it, else go the linux way.

For the SP2, just slipstream SP2 into the Upgrade disc and install from it. Swapping discs would cause activation issues since they aren't of the same type (one's upgrade, the other's an OEM disc).