No. Your Dell OEM Win XP Pro will only work on a Dell PC and is "supposed" to be tied to the mobo it came with.
Please clarify... Of course you can install the Dell OEM WinXP copy onto any computer, but unless you can provide a valid product key, it will deactivate after 30 days. Have you been able to run the Dell OEM copy of XP on another computer past 30 days and receive Windows Updates?
Here's what I was planning on a for a build. Appreciate anyones 2 cents. Intel E6600 Asus P5N32-E SLI LGA 775 Nvidia nForce 680i SLI Crucial Ballistix 2gb Thermallake Eureka case(full tower) 2 EVGA 256 GeFOrce 7600GT 256mb GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Rosewill 550 watt power supply Western Digital 160 GB IDE Ultra ATA100 HD misc CD and DVD burner will use current monitors.
As long as you can activate it, you can get updates, etc.. Who cares if you transfer OEM software to another machine, do you think microsoft really gives a crap? They only do it so the big guys (dell, etc..) arn't letting people reuse old copies of the software.
the os came with dell, hp, etc. are tied to that machine. when you install the os, it will first check the motherboard id. if it matches, then it will allow you to proceed. otherwise it will just crap out. you can't even transfer the os to different computer model of the same brand.
demoship, I had a computer built. It's very nice, but it get's to be verrrrrrrrrrry $$$$$ and time consuming. Check out this site = everything ready to go right out of the box: http://www.naplestech.com/shopcart/nti_quadstation.asp I hope this helps. Tom
So does that mean the OEM OS licence dies w/ the motherboard? What if the mobo needs replacing? How does Microsoft validation work? anyone know what it is checking on my computer? Thanks for all the contributors here. This is turning out to be an informative thread.