Answers mixed in...

> From: William Patton
>  Hello, I recently purchased Win XP Home, but have not installed it as yet.
>  I have not dealt with MS activation on any products as yet.  I checked the
>  MS site and found some information, however I still had a couple of
>  questions which  I wondered if someone could address for me.  If I install
>  it and do not activate it right away, I understand I have 30 days.   If I am
>  not happy with it on my 5 year old computer (Asus, Amd 1.4, 256MB) and have
>  not activated it and then uninstall it  can I still use it again in the
>  future on a new machine that I may build at a later date.without calling for
>  an activation authorization.

Yes. If it is never activated, you can put it on as many different "test" machines as
you want and get thirty days on each... Warning: NONE can be activated or
the "key" will be used and MS will give you trouble with activations...

(2) If I do activate it by use of the
>  telephone method and obtain the 40 digit number they talk about, is this
>  number only good for one use on this one machine.

Yes, The number they give you is hardware specific and will not work on a
different machine...  (The number you gave them first gave them the "hardware
snapshot" of your machine, and they used that to make the number they gave back...

> I wondered if I reformat the harddrive on the machine they say you will need
> to re-authorize the activation, but I thought if I use the telephone method I would
> have the necessary number.  Would that be true?

Several things come into play here... There "used to be(?)" a couple files you could save
and then re-format your drive. Putting the files back after a re-install would automatically
re-activate that ONE machine if the hardware was close enough...  "Close enough"
is a very hard thing to determine... Since the hard drive would look different, you
loose activation "points" right there...  If enough other things have changed you will
more than likely need to re-activate... (You need 7 out of ten points...)
(Side note. I change things all the time, but slowly... For 2 1/2 years I had no problems
with WPA (activation...).  Then, while troubleshooting a problem I "software disabled"
my Ethernet card... When I re-booted, that was the straw that broke the camels
back, and Windows demanded I re-activate...  (It was a very easy, painless process.)
I think the computer called in and did it automatically, (with my permission...)

>  One other question.  In order to get the feel for XP, I wanted to install
>  it  to another logical drive while keeping my original OS which is WinME.
>  Please discuss the pros and cons of having WinME and WinXP on the same
>  machine. (Asus mb, AMD 1.4, 256MB)

Disclaimer: I do not dual-boot...
If I were doing that, I'd get a good hard drive and clone the system and try it out
on the clone... (Any mixture of dual-booting or just XP alone...)
This week, Seagate 120G HDs with a 5 year warranty are going for $50 AMIR...
At the very least, I'd save an Image file of the old drive before going forward...

I have run XP on AMD 1.7+ and 512MB.  It runs well...

                                            Rick Glazier

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