laptop xp to home computer using me

The Windows XP Home End User Licence Agreement (EULA) entitles you to use the operating system on that particular laptop it is installed on. According to the licence terms and conditions, you have paid for the licence to use the operating system only and you do not own it.

If you want to install a free operating system, go for one of the Linux desktop distributions. You can download a self-contained ISO image and burn it on a CD, or order an Ubuntu installation CD free of charge from https://shipit.ubuntu.com and it will be posted to you.

If you don't want to update or patch XP once you've got it on the home computer, either of these methods should work.

1) You can get an adapter that will allow you to install your laptop's hard drive in your home desktop as a replacement for your existing hard drive. This is legal but obviously will render your laptop useless, and moving the drive back and forth between the two is highly impractical; see my discussion of drivers below.

2) Buy a copy of Norton Ghost or other disk imaging tools, make a boot disk, make an image of the laptop hard drive, boot the desktop using the disk, and install the laptop image onto the desktop. While this will give you two working machines, it's not only illegal but impractical. You won't be able to update the desktop for reasons I'll explain later.

In either case, as soon as you boot the desktop Windows will begin complaining about the changes in the hardware. You'll have to install new drivers for just about everything. The video cards will be so different you'll probably have to boot in Safe Mode just to be able to see what you're doing. This is what makes moving the drive between the two machines such a pain. Each time you move it you'll have to reload the drivers. You could create two hardware profiles, but that's a topic way beyond the scope of this conversation.

In addition, you'll have problems the next time you visit Microsoft's web site or attempt to run the Update utility from the desktop. Because the hardware has changed so radically from the installation configuration, MS will probably consider it an invalid installation. This will result in a best case of your not being able to update or patch, and a worst case of MS invalidating the installation and crippling or disabling XP. Once that happens, neither machine will work.

Even if the laptop had come with a CD, you couldn't use it to install XP on the desktop. Most consumer model computers come with CDs specific to the manufacturer and often the model. If you had a CD you wouldn't be able to boot the desktop from it; the boot process would stop when the installation program recognized it was booting a model other than what it was designed for.

Another consideration is the hardware. If you're running ME, your home computer may not have enough processor, RAM, and hard drive to handle XP. MS's site used to have an online tool that would evaluate your hardware and software and report any conflicts with XP. You might want to check there with your desktop before you bother trying the above suggestions.

It's just not worth the trouble.