Kingsman

Thanks for the good info...apologies for the impatience

Could I please get a reply? There is a lot of material here on MSFN on how to do the exact same thing that I want to perform, with windows XP. Someone should know.

I find this snip of information, accredited to the forums @ mydigitallife.info: My case is that my family has bought an HP (COMPAQ??) desktop with Vista Basic already installed, and came with a lot of junkware preinstalled on the machine. In the event that I would want to reinstall Vista on the machine, I would have to use the COA sticker on the machine, and the Windows Anytime Upgrade CD, which is obviously not an OEM disc, certainly not a manufacturer-dependent preactivated one. This guide that I have found doesn't seem too clear... All I want to do is be able to make an OEM CD that will activate automatically, and avoid the hassle of calling Microsoft. I am willing to be patient and learn, so post away...Thanks in advance!

That's a good feature, given the ability to have a bunch of haphazard files all over the hard drive organized in a bunch of virtual folders. About the Windows 7 taskbar. Should I decide to upgrade will I be stuck with the thumbnail-style icons on the taskbar, or is there a setting to revert back and forth between that and the way XP handles it?

DownloadSquad has some very good articles. I also read that Windows 7's native zip compressing/decompressing is extremely slow. Can anyone explain to me what these "libraries" do?

BUMP this is a question I need an answer also.

I have been googling around for this type of windows xp professional installation cd, and it seems nonexistant. Is this because it can only be legally sold to licensed people?

I would look here: At Bleeping Computer Site was down When I tried to access it, hence the Google cached page.

I personally hate pepsi. Coke is better, Dr. Pepper is better.

So you assume windows XP is unsuitable?

I've been a lurker for some time, made a few posts, and thought I would go through and *officially* introduce myself.

Thanks for the link. Gets me the info I need. @iamthekey: So, an average pirater will be able to activate unlimited amount of installations with one COA Key through telephone activation? Sometimes I begin to think Microsoft allows on purpose a few loopholes available to piraters or smart people to figure out, just for the sole purpose of keeping and developing windows dominance.

I must emit this whole windows activation process is extremely complicated. The issue I want to address, namely, is how does Microsoft know that my COA key is valid or not, or more precisely, know that my installation hasn't been licensed more than is allowed? Is my COA key a totally unique key? Let me invent a scenario. I custom-build a computer, so obviously it's not a royalty machine, and I seperately buy a legal copy of windows xp professional. During the setup/activation process I must provide my COA key. Unfortunately, somewhere out in cyber space, someone has used an illegal keygenerator to generate a key, which just *happens* to be the same as my COA key. Now, what does microsoft do and how do they handle situations like this without preventing thousands of legitimate products activate?

I hate using the Windows xp setup cd to format...It just doesn't get rid of everything I want it to, especialy hidden partitions, etc. I just boot up on an ubuntu cd and use the partition manager.