Changing Windows XP Licence

[Oneeyedvic]

Lets say that someone has a cracked copy of Windows XP home. He (or she) then wants to change it for a legitimate copy.

Is there any way they can change the license details without reformatting and doing a new install?

[vehelpfulguy]

Recently someone on this forum asked about buying a new copy of Windows XP because theirs was not genuine.

At the time I spent ages on the Microsoft web site to try to find an answer to your question but could not find one.

If you want to try yourself go to www.microsoft.com and search for keywords like genuine or counterfeit.

My guess is you CANNOT, but I have no proof of this.

The reason I say you cannot it that there is not just one version of Windows XP.

There are three main verisons: Windows XP Home, Professional, and Media Center Edition (and others like 64 bit)

But within that there are different versions for different audiences.

So if we take Windows XP Professional.

There is the retail boxed version, the OEM version, (for people who build PCs), there is the enterprise version (for large companies who put it on hundreds of PCs), and the developer version (for people who are software developers) and maybe others as well.

The problem is that different versions have different codes to activate them.

If you had say an counterfeit enterprise version of Windows XP professional installed, but then went out and bought the retail boxed version from PC world then it would not recognise the code you type in.

Making people reformat and re-install may also be a slight punishment for using a counterfeit version in the the first place, they do not want to make it easy.

I am willing to accept I am wrong if anybody knows better.

[BillyNoMates]

I am sure there is a way - detailed on the microsoft website. It involves editing a value in the registry.

However, when I've tried it, although it went through each step OK, I had problems with the legitimate key.

Details here ; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328874/en-us

[fo3nix]

You can definitely change the product key that you have for XP. So if you were to buy an OEM CD of the same version of XP that you have, with a legal key, then you could feasably change the key to that.

However, as vehelpfulguy says, I'm not sure whether this would actually work. But I don't really see why not.

[Oneeyedvic]

Cheers good people - appreciate it

[fo3nix]

Googled it and came up with this:
http://www.mike-devlin.com/windows/key.htm

That includes a key reader, as well as a key changer. His instructions show you how to make it generate a key, but I'm sure the program could be used to just enter a new key, and it'll convert it to the XP product ID for you.

[rojash]

Another way of doing it is simply to perform a repair installation over the top of the existing one (using of course, the new disk!) - entering the correct key when asked.

[MTIH1992]

Yes, get a keychanger. Search something like Windows XP Keychanger in google. Careful though, scan them for viruses before running them, some of them are known to be trojans

[MTIH1992]

Or you can do a system restore to a date before you installed the Genuine advantage update and select never to be informed of that update again!