If I format my hard drive, and reinstall Me, will it ask me for my product key, and if it does and I enter it, will it tell me it's already in use, since it was on the same computer before it was formatted? By the way, the Windows Me disc is legit, not a copy. Thanks. Dell Dimension 4600i Windows XP Home SP1 Pentium 4 @ 2.8GHz 512MB Dual Channel RAM 40GB HD

If you have the Product Key that came with your ME disk, then you should have no problems. No. It won't tell you it's already in use.

Windows XP is currently the only OS which tells you if a copy is already 'in use', though it's still easy enough to re-install and re-activate via phone if necessary - just becomes a problem with patches & service packs. I think it's fairly safe to say that the majority of copies of Win 98 & ME out there have been installed on more than one machine simply because there's no reasonable way for it to be traced - hence the introduction of 'product activation' by MS, Symantec etc. "I know that I'm mad - I've always been mad..."