Genuine windows license

peteym

I unfortunately have an illegal copy of windows on my computer and now because of that I have a constant stream of annoying popup messages telling me that my copy is not genuine.
If I were to purchase a genuine windows license, what exactly happens then?
Is it just a case of me recieving a serial number or something and entering that in somewhere?

Conar

That depends really.
I think that a lot of the illegal copies of XP floating around are the corporate versions, so your standard version key would not be accepted.
You'd probably need to reinstall.

peteym

if I was to reinstall, would I still keep everything on my hard drive???

aFlabbyPanda

if you buy a genuine version and the key doesnt work you can do a repair which will overwrite the system files and take the new key while leaving everything else intact.

peteym

any idea how much it costs to purchase a genuine license?

Conar

All depends really.
You looking for Pro, Home or Media Center?
www.komplett.ie are reasonably priced for the OS's.

EDIT:
If you can hold out another couple of months Vista will be out.
Would be a shame to buy XP if you were planning to update to Vista.
You could also download the free Windows Vista RC1 (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/) and use it until the full version is released.

peteym

cool! thanks for your help

peteym

is there any risks in getting this beta version of vista - like its not gonna feck up my computer or anything is it? - are you using it?

Webmonkey

It is still possible to remove them popups but you should really do the right thing and get a geniune version of xp

If you are an average user, i would keep well away from vista until it is offically released.

aFlabbyPanda

peteym wrote:

is there any risks in getting this beta version of vista - like its not gonna feck up my computer or anything is it? - are you using it?

what spec is your pc? vista is still beta so it could cause you all kinds of aggro. I used the RC2 version recently and still had problems with apps that run just fine on XP.

peteym

intel pentium 4, cpu 3 ghz, 250g hard drive.......

Capt'n Midnight

peteym wrote:

is there any risks in getting this beta version of vista - like its not gonna feck up my computer or anything is it? - are you using it?

if you upgrade XP then you won't be able do downgrade (even if it says it does don't expect it to work)

Conar

You can't actually upgrade to Vista.
At least not to the beta versions anyway.

ethernet

BrianjG wrote:

what spec is your pc? vista is still beta so it could cause you all kinds of aggro. I used the RC2 version recently and still had problems with apps that run just fine on XP.

I found setting compatability to XP SP2 solved most of these problems for me.