Unfortunately, there are differences in the disks. I ran into the same
problem. There may be a way to patch the disk contents to adjust for this,
but I do not know how to do this. However, many OEM versions of the OS are
pre-loaded in a separate partition on the hard disk. If you have not wiped
out the hard disk, you might check on how to do a restore on the Dell - it
involves pressing some keys during initial boot process to bring up the BIOS
options. There you would select to restore the XP OS.

Perhaps someone on the list who is more familiar with Dell may give you the
process in detail. Good luck.

Peter Shkabara
--------------------------
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-----Original Message-----
From: cubbettee cubbettee [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 

I have a question about a Dell machine running XP.
Machine is about 7 years old and the owner does not have his disk any longer
I tried to put my xp  disk into the machine, and it did start to install
everything, however when I put in the  xp numbers on the side of his
machine, it said those numbers are invalid.  I thought that you could use
any xp disk as long as you  use the same numbers without changing any
hardware?  Do i need to use an older disk, one made during the years of his
computer.  I know I have disks  with sp 2 and some with sp3, on them.

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