After a stupid problem with WGA, apparently I need to scrap this installation or be murdered by M$ ninja assassins. The one I have installed is a VLK, and I want to replace it with an OEM copy that I'll buy off of Newegg. Apparently, you can't use an OEM key on a VLK edition, since some things are a little different. Can I just run a fresh installation over everything (without formatting) and keep everything that I had? Will I have to reinstall everything I had on there? Am I just completely screwed? I heard that you can reinstall over an existing installation without deleting everything, but does it keep all of my installed programs, my registry, everything? If it's absolutely 100% safe to do this, I'm putting an OEM copy of XP Pro on my Christmas list. If not...well I don't know what I'll do. I'll ask for a huge external drive and back up everything onto it...and still ask for an OEM copy to install later. Just wondering, Cody
Installing over a previous install will wipe your registry. It just preserves the raw data. OEM = only when you buy a new (or certain parts) pc... Reselling OEM copies is illegal.
Newegg sells them...Microsoft knows about it. I don't think they consider it illegal, because many times Newegg bundles some piece of hardware with the OS itself too.
Yeah, I don't know how Newegg gets the OEM copies, but they're definitely not reselling them. They're brand new copies that have never been used.
