Windows XP Activation questions

[wjsulliv]

2 questions:

1)
I just went to one of the Visual Studio .Net student launch events, and got a copy of XP Pro. The XP Pro disk has a CD-Key/Product-Key. Is this the same old school (put it on any/every machine) type Cd-Key like Windows 98 has?

If not what is it?


2)
If you were building a few (say 4) exactly identical (you simply went out and bought 4 of every component) computers could you do (get away with) the following using Norton Ghost 2002 and Windows XP Pro (Retail):

Setup one machine, installing and activating your XP Pro properly and legally. Then Ghost the system and put the image on the other 3 systems.

What would happen? I figure activation might be fooled seeing as the hardware and setup are identical and the product is activated? Would updates fail?

Thanks

 

[vetteguy]

1. The CD key is like any other, you just need a valid one to get past the installer. Any one that is vaild for XP will do.

2. Well, the main hardware component that activation looks at is the NIC. Even if you have identical NICs, they will have different MAC addresses, so that might send up a signal to the OS that it needs to be reactivated. If you're talking about doing this in like a corporate/university environment, if you buy the Corporate version it does not require activation so this wouldn't be an issue.

 

[Derango]

It looks at hard drive serial numbers, MAC addresses...it won't be fooled by the identical systems.

 

[bozo1]

<< It looks at hard drive serial numbers, MAC addresses...it won't be fooled by the identical systems. >>