So what if you don't have a windows disc, because windowsMe came preinstalled on your computer? Is there anything you can do in that case? As for the original question, I just read about this in WindowsXP inside out, which was published by Microsoft, but not written by them. They say that if you upgrade four or more components from a list of 10 on your computer in a period of 120 days or less, the activation mechanism may mistakenly assume that you've installed the operating system on a new computer. They also say that you should backup a file called wpa.dbl located in the system32 directory. You should save this to a floppy. If you need to reinstall, you can restore this file and bypass the need for activation, if you hardware hasn't changed significantly. This is really a good book, in my opinion. Kevin