My friend thinks he got a virus on his computer. He has XP home installed but doesn't have the original XP Home disk to reinstall the OS. He's wanting to start "fresh". Can he use my XP home cd if he has his own original key code? Thanks Pete

Think he'll have to use your key to use your cd.

He can use an XP home key with an XP Home cd.

Tim

One issue will be OEM vs Microsoft Versions, another might be Vendor branding on OEM versions. I once tried to install a Dell version of Win2k on a non-Dell machine, and it wouldn't let me. It looked at the Bios before getting too far into setup.

Nothing to lose in trying...

It depends. It may work if they are both home version of the same flavor.(oem vs non oem). Some manufacturers have there cds setup to check the bios with a script to make sure it is there computer. Dell and Gateway both have done this in the past. If that is the case the way around it is to boot to a win98 boot disk and setup a partition. Then reboot to the boot floppy again with cdrom support(win98 boot disk works good for this). Then copy the "windows" directory I believe for xp over to the c drive from the cd. Then there is an winnt or windows installer in there that will start the install off your hard drive and by pass there stupid bios scripts. The initial partion you create will have to be fat32 by the way but after your install you can use the windows help file to convert it to ntfs. This will only work if your friends version of xp is the same flavor as yours. I think if you have a product key microsoft isn't going to freak out if you use another copy and product key as long as your using one purchased copy install on your system. If you don't have a win98 boot disk go to www.bootdisk.com. (http://www.bootdisk.com.) I wrote allot of stuff but it should work. Once the install is complete you can delete the directory you copied off the cd to begin with. NOTE: I have never tried this with xp but have successfully done this with win2k.