My friend has a Dell computer with Windows XP Home on it. Recently, he's gotten so many viruses because his sister keeps getting onto sites like Myspace and neopets. It's gotten so bad that we've decided to reformat his HD and install windows fresh again. We have a problem. He kept EVERY SINGLE system CD that came with the computer EXCEPT FOR THE WINDOWS REINSTALLATION CD! Now, I have a Dell Laptop, and still have my reinstallation CD. I also have an off the shelf copy of XP that I bought at Wal-Mart a few years ago. Could I use one of these CD's to install windows on his computer if I use HIS product key? He still has the sticker on the back of his computer with his Windows product key. If somebody could give me a definitive answer on this, I would be very grateful.

For reference, all copies of Windows involved are XP Home edition.

Yes.

Thanks. I guess I'll find out today if you're right. Gonna head to his place in a while(He lives 80 miles from me).

I've never gotten a virus from neopets or myspace. >_> Don't blame the sister here.

Tell him to get better protection! AVG, Windows Defender, Adaware, spyware blaster. All of 'em.

And immediately update to windows xp service pack 3.

I'll probably do that for him today. He's 100% computer illiterate, so I know he wouldn't be able to set that stuff up.

EDIT: This begs the question, what are you doing on Neopets?

There's one catch to the key thing: you have to be installing the exact same version of Windows as his key was intended for. A Vista Home Basic key will not install Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate or Vista Business, or even Vista Home Basic SP1.

It's all good there. He has XP Home Edition, and both of my CD's are XP Home Edition. I hate how Vista has half a dozen different package levels. I miss having just Home and Professional. Hopefully Windows 7 doesn't turn out to be a complete up.

xp has home, server, buisness and pro.
vista has home, home premium, buisness and ultimate.

And it's windows, so they'll roll out 7 as terribly as possible.
"Ok, so for our new version of windows we're going to completely revamp the driver interface, which will kill support for all of your current hardware.... again."

Well, just got home. I reformatted his HD and installed Windows in what I think is a new personal record. It didn't even ask me for a product key. I used the disk from my laptop, since I remembered once I got there that the copy I bought at Wal-mart was actually an Upgrade, and not the full thing(that's what happens when you don't use the disk for 4 years). He's not online yet since he lost all his driver CD's and I couldn't install his LAN driver. Even my WinXp cd's didn't have the proper drivers. Guess I've just gotten lucky with all the other computers i've installed it on in the past. His uncle who's an internet guy will set him up this week. Never had time to install any antivirus software, but I'm going to let him suffer without it, since he chose to get pissy over something stupid(I told him it's retarded to throw away your system disks) and started a fist fight(hope his nose feels better in the morning). Then i ended up getting pulled over on the way home and falsely accused of:
A. Reckless Driving(For running a stop sign that I didn't run).
B. Expired insurance(It's been renewed, but my jackass insurance company never mailed the new card).
C. Almost a DUI (Sport's car in wet weather tends to handle poorly, they interpreted that as me being drunk LOL )

So, all in all, it's been a very interesting day.

There's a lesson to be learned here. NEVER, EVER complain about a boring week.

Also, never go 80 miles out of your way to help a ungrateful friend when he messed up his computer by hitting the porn without an antivirus program?

Actually, Windows 7 beta looks pretty sweet right now, imo. I imagine Vista was sort of the screw up line like the Windows Me was. But Windows Me led to XP and XP is awesome, so I imagine windows 7 will be okay .

Butum. We'll see.

Vista is giving me nowhere near the problems that ME did. There are some annoying things, but for the most part it's fine. ME, on the other hand...

Bloody ME.

Yes, Me was the most terrible thing to touch a computer since the Internet.

Windows ME never existed!!!!!!!!!!!! Got it?

I use Vista, and I like it (on my bleeding edge PC with hardware all chosen specifically for Vista).

That said: Vista is still awful for any organization trying to roll it out over multiple types of machines. I did some technical contracting for a school district recently and they gave me a list of reasons why they refuse to support Vista on their server. It was quite large.

Also: XP was the exact same way at the stage Vista is on now. It was a complete cluster:censor: trying to get it to support drivers when you had multiple you were working with. It took quite a while (and mostly was solved by hardware devs finally rolling out XP compatible drivers) to get XP to be so functional. Vista will get there eventually. The problem is Microsoft not supporting backwards compatibility that actually works.

By strange coincidence, in today's UF...

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20090126

Brian: Wait a minute, there is just a giant space from 1933-1945, you can't just pretend like..
German: Nothing happened! We were on vacation!
Brian: But the Germans invaded Poland in...
German: We were invited! Punch was served!

I used to be on the bleeding edge... I once attended a graphics developer conference hosted by Nvidia, because part of the fee included a GeForce 3 card, which meant I got it before it was released commercially

These days I would have to say I'm on the clotted edge...

I have used Vista at work for over 2 years (wow has it really been that long?) and I still don't like it. I'm really hoping Windows 7 is to Vista what XP was to 2000. I still remember when XP came out they made a big fuss about the features, not mentioning many of them (like sound in terminal services) were originally planned for 2000, and then quietly dropped...

What about it don't you like? It takes a bit of configuring, but I actually like the way Vista runs. Not as much as my linux box, but i still like it.

I'll admit it's getting better, especially with SP1, but I don't like the way it deals with the network. I found it to be quite slow and although tweaks such as the TCP autotuning disable, disabling unneeded services etc did improve it, it's still slower than XP. I still find it quicker to log in to a 2003 server to set NTFS permission (which I have to do regularly) than to attempt to do it straight from Vista, even with the added login time.

It's not so much a dislike anymore I suppose, it has grown on me (like a tumor). It's that actually there are no killer features in Vista that make me want it. Windows Aero leaves me cold, I mean honeslty how often do you use the scrolling apps feature? Besides to call collegues over and show them how cool it looks? The search feature is not something I have ever found I need (I know where things are!) and UAC is a pain. I know I can disable UAC, and I know from a security point of view it is an additional layer of protection (such as better protection pre-patch with the recent XML data vulnerability MS08-078), but as a network admininstrator I just found it endlessly irritating.

I guess actually XP just did everything I wanted, and Vista to me only offered the same, but at a slower speed.