Opps, Guess some of you were wrong. Question, will an OEM CD or ?Restore Disk? supplied by your computer manufacturer ?qualify? to run an OS upgrade. The answer is that not all will work for this purpose, mostly because the Windows CAB files are not in evidence. Check with your computer manufacturer to confirm that your copy qualifies, or buy your Upgrade copy directly from them. Presently, the only company that I have confirmed all their OEM CD?s will ?qualify? is Dell. I talked to a Dell Representative during the XP Launch in New York City on the trade show floor who confirmed this and stated that they understood the importance of keeping it that way.
So what do you do if your OEM CD or Restore disk does not work as qualifying media? One neat new feature of XP allows one to get around this problem. First, start the XP clean install from within an existing qualified install rather then from the XP CD or from a DOS prompt. When you see the screen that ask what type of install to do, change ?Upgrade (Recommended)? to ?New install.? You can then select the existing partition, format it, and do a Clean Install, never having to insert your qualifying product CD.
