'Microsoft steps up piracy fight' - now i'm in trouble

Check out this article from the BBC It seems they have got a little annoyed with people not paying for their inferior product.

Now whilst this is probably quite a wise move, it does leave me in a sticky situation.

My gf bought a compaq PC which had XP home pre-installed, the hard drive died so i installed a copy of XP Pro from work (dont tell the boss) on the new drive. Now she's gonna be up pooh creek if she tries to update. Do you think there is anyway i could get an install disk from Compaq or PC world where we bought it? It has serial numbers etc.. on the outside of the box so i'm not trying to break the law.

Any advice, i think her dad might shout at me if he thinks i've killed her computer.

The Compaq she purchased should have come with reinstall disks

nope. came with a recovery partition on the hard drive. useful until it died

Then go to the store where it was purchased and tell them that

Should be able to get a restore CD from Compaq but there will be a charge of some kind -- after all SOMEBODY paid for the OS and SW licenses when it was bought

And frankly I believe you really shouldn't share SW (even crappy over priced XP) because average Joes/Janes are involved in producing SW

If you have the original serial number, you can change the serial no on the current installation...

Do a search for it, but it can be done with some registry hackery...

Then the installation would basically be legal again, as she has a valid license...

Problem solved!

PM me if you have trouble finding what you need...

google for rockxp and see what that brings up

Man I hate those recovery partitions, my dad got one of those on a new HP. That is the cheapest, friggin joke from PC makers, trying to save a buck. I understand a recovery CD, but restore partitions eat up valuable HD space.

If there's one reason to at least empathise with piracy it's when manufacturers pull stunts like that. Of course it's not really piracy AFAIK because the laptop *will* have had a license with it and so she has the right to run it. But the problem being that she has no way to prove that right over the internet without a legit installation.

The laptop should have a sticker on it somewhere (probably underneath) with a serial number. I think if you acquire an original XP install disk - not the corporate version or whatever - and activate it with that serial then it'll recognise it as legit and work. It won't really care that you downloaded the disk image from some torrent somewhere if it's on the receiving end of proof of purchase which is what those serial stickers are.

Not only do recovery partitions eat up disk space, but they don't protect against many viruses, and every computer user's nightmare... CATASTROPHIC HARD DRIVE FAILURE.

sevenhelmet said:

Not only do recovery partitions eat up disk space, but they don't protect against many viruses, and every computer user's nightmare... CATASTROPHIC HARD DRIVE FAILURE.

Click to expand...

Yes - but I'm sure OEMs like DELL or HP get a further XP license discount from MSFT if they use a partition .... why - because it reduces the opportunity for someone to "share" their XP CDs ----- and it also saves the OEM a small bit of $$ to have to create and ship CDs with the system.


It always comes down to $$$$ in one way or another - keep in mind these guys are selling millions of units --- every penny saved per million = $10,000 ----- save 5 cents and thats $50,000

mig.gentry said:

Check out this article from the BBC It seems they have got a little annoyed with people not paying for their inferior product.

Now whilst this is probably quite a wise move, it does leave me in a sticky situation.

My gf bought a compaq PC which had XP home pre-installed, the hard drive died so i installed a copy of XP Pro from work (dont tell the boss) on the new drive. Now she's gonna be up pooh creek if she tries to update. Do you think there is anyway i could get an install disk from Compaq or PC world where we bought it? It has serial numbers etc.. on the outside of the box so i'm not trying to break the law.

Any advice, i think her dad might shout at me if he thinks i've killed her computer.

Click to expand...

The truth is, if you installed with a valid key from your work and didn't use a keygen you shouldn't have a problem with it working and downloading updates (except any moral qualms you might have about stealing). As for legal means to put things right, you should be able, as others suggested, to get system restore disk from compaq. You can see how to do that here . You also have the option of nuking the whole thing and putting linux on it. Fedora is a nice distro.