Originally posted by WarezRocks@Aug 3 2002, 10:43 PM
OEM does not always mean the same key for every PC.
I work for C####q. A while back I snagged a restore XP Pro CD for one of the desktop PCs. Took it home and looked at it real close. So I took the i386 folder and made a bootable CD from it... vey easy. Then, since COA labels are fairly easy to 'aquire' from work a XP Pro COA serial number... and all are different on the COAs... works perfect. I have used the serials from five different COAs to install XP Pro on five different homebuilt PCs and they all worked fine. Since no one else has ever used the COAs you can activate XP just like a store bought copy... but no one registered it, just activated it.
Hang on, now we are talking about two different things. If you had XP Pro keys that required activation, then we are effectively talking Retail copies, aren't we?
OEM (in XP's lingo) should mean a copy this is BIOS-locked to that particular hardware manufacturer's BIOS string.
Epyx