I am getting ready to fdisk, reformat my HD and clean install XP. I then must activate it to let MS know I have installed it, I guess. My question is if I do this again to the same compuiter, for whatever reason, will MS think I am passing around the XP CDRom? Bill

Bill, You should be just fine. If you're installing the XP on a machine that already had it, and you activated it on that SAME machine...then XP will most likely let you activate again without any issues or problems. If youdecided to change numberous hardware on the machine, and then do an activation...you may run into problems as xp makes a record of about 7 (i think it's 7) hardware addresses on your current configuration. But, in a nutshell, if everything is basically the same - you should be just fine. Debbie

I have formatted and re-installed the same copy of XP on my pc many many times, and it activates without problems every time. I've even changed some of my hardware and I still have not had any problems. No worries :)

Thanks guys and gals. I wanted to be sure I wasn't setting a trap for myself. Bill

Ain't it terrible that you have to worry yourself about using a product you bought?

To DooDah, I am not historically pro Microsoft, but you've got to understand the situation they got themselves into. They had no copy protection (a cd key hardly counts anymore) on 95, NT, 98, 98SE, ME, and 2000. There was nothing to keep people from stealing this software. They've finally done something to protect their software, and after all the piracy of 95 - 2000, I can't blame them. I'm just amazed it took them this long to do it. Keying to the hardware helps assure that the machine thats supposed to be running XP is indeed the machine that is running XP. Of course, people still pirate XP, but the casual CD borrower is thwarted.

I installed Office on the wrong machine once (OEM version) I called microsoft to expain I'd got mixed up and they activated me. If you have a real license I think they are fine about it.