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xp oem and retail

J

Jasonh100

Senior member
What are the differences between xp oem and retail. I've heard the activation of the oem version is only tied to the motherboard and not all the hardware. First of all, IS THIS TRUE?

Second, if it is true if you flash your bios will you have to reactivate?

thanks
 
Bad link.

To answer your question, an OEM version that you might purchase from a retailer does require activation. Dell, Gateway, and a few other major manufacturers are hardcoding their OEM versions to look for a Dell (Gateway, whatever) BIOS and as long as you are installing on one of their machines, activation will remain disabled. Bring that OEM copy to a non-Dell machine (or if you flash the bios sometimes in the future to some generic version that removes the Dell specific identifiers) and activation will be required. Any OEM flavor purchased from like Newegg or somewhere will always have activation enabled.


 
I'm not a subscriber so the link doesn't get me anywhere.

On the second point, the way I understood it, you would still have to activate it but the number would be based on the motherboard and not all the hardware in the computer. Thus, if you upgraded something in your computer you wouldn't have to activate again.
 
The only time it is based on the motherboard is if it is an OEM copy of XP that was purchased WITH a new Dell or Gateway computer. Those companies (and probably a few others) have modified their specific OEM versions to look for a bios signature. Any other OEM version that you purchase from a retailer or a mom-and-pop shop or whatever will work exactly like the retail copy of XP as far as activation goes.


 
Oh, and to get the new links that I posted for you, since you are not yet a subscriber, just change "subscriber" to "forums" in the URL.
 
Again, your links have subscriber in the subdomain so it asks for a username and password.

I did a search for "xp oem" and found nothing to be relevent. I'll change the domain to forums on your links to see if they are any good.

 


<< Again, your links have subscriber in the subdomain so it asks for a username and password.

I did a search for "xp oem" and found nothing to be relevent. I'll change the domain to forums on your links to see if they are any good. >>



I have to change my pms from forums.anandtech.com to subscriber.anandtech.com so I can use the "faster" servers, so it should work the other way around.
 
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