I have an acer laptop I got for free (broke screen). Had windows vista on it, but the lady who gave it to me didn't provide me with a password for the admin account, making vista even more worthless to me than ever. So I downgraded to a copy of Xp pro I had. I currently have 2 copies, one from an HP laptop that was scrapped, and one from a Gateway laptop that was scraped. I installed the HP copy of windows xp pro and couldn't get the cd key to validate, so I tried it again today now with the gateway copy. Neither will validate. I've tried to activate over the phone, went to the various Microsoft websites, downloaded the tools they provide, got keyfinding programs and check and double check my keys are good. I've ran the online tool that configures pc setting (on the Microsoft website) and gotten the green light on everything but product key validation... I'm at a loss here. Has anyone else ran into the problem and resolved it? Is there a program I can get that will legally patch something over here and make them compatible, or what? Thank you for any help you guys can provide.
No, I do not wish to, nor have the funds to go out and buy a fresh copy of any version of windows.