XP Install Key Question

[Rocker]

I have been given an HP laptop to fix, the laptop has been reinstalled with a illegal copy of XP Pro. I am now reinstalling XP as the laptop has an genuine XP home licence.

Normally I'd just recover it from the recovery partition, but whoever dealt with it last time has deleted and formatted this partition too

So i'm left with no option but to reinstall windows. Now I have an XP home disk, but when I try to install it and enter the genuine XP product key stuck to the bottom of the laptop it says it is an incorrect key?

Why is this? Is it because the key is an HP key or something? Are they different?

 

[Rocker]

Cheers guys, solved the problem this morning.

The disk I was using was indeed retail (which I didn't check initially).

Used an OEM disk instead and all is good.


Also after a bit of research, something which I didnt know with XP as I have never had this problem before with the keys, is that keys for SP1/2 work but you require a specific key for SP3. Therefore if you are reinstalling XP with an SP3 disk and the key is an SP2 or bellow key it wont work.