I am running into some difficulty upgrading one several of the computers at work from 2000 pro to XP pro. Without realizing that oem versions of XP for system builders cannot be used to upgrade a computer 4 of them were purchased for the upgrades. I have a copy of XP pro retail version but the product key is already in use. My intention was to use the setup files from the retail version along with the license of the OEM version (not realizing that this doesn't work). I have looked all over the internet and found several different answers to this problem (such as changing the PID in setupp.ini file on install CD) but non of them offered a good, legal solution that was able to be activated without any problems. My Question is this. Should I be able to perform the upgrade using the retail XP CD (initially using the product key that is already activated) and then during the activation of Windows, use the phone activation and change the product key to the OEM license before calling M$ to activate? Is this a legal way to bypass the upgrade limitation of OEM versions and/or will it work?
