Okay I've worked as an entry level tech for a few corporations and colleges that use volume licensing for XP. Recently I was experimenting with some software and making drastic settings changes on a test computer. Obviously the point of using a test machine is so if you break XP, you can reformat and reinstall, no harm done. Well my new boss basically freaked out because according to him: Every time you reformat and reinstall XP, it uses one of your licenses. We are volume licensed for about 50 XP installations. So, I asked if this meant that, if I sat on one machine which was connected to the internet and reformatted and reinstalled XP 50 times in a row, just for kicks, we'd be completely out and would have to purchase more? He said yes because microsoft monitors this and if you tried going over the computers would start having severe problems. This seems absolutely ridiculous to me, but I've had trouble finding a microsoft article to back me on this so I can prove him wrong(or prove me wrong). So am I being stupid or am I correct? and where is this documented? Any help would be greatly appreciated!