[philthomas]

Dave .... my understanding is that OEM & Retail keys are not the same and cannot be interchanged.
I found an interesting article a while back, which expalins things fairly well. I wont list all of it, but here is the relevant part :

Windows identifies its version from a configuration file called setupp.ini (path : [CD DRIVE]:\i386\SETUPP.INI). It has the version information and the information about the key it accepts.
a sample setupp.ini would look like,
[PID]
ExtraData=707A667567736F696F697911AE7E05
Pid=55034000
I dont know what 'ExtraData' field would do, but what we need is the second part. The field called PID. The first 5 digits of the PID identifies the version information together with the CD release information. The next 3 characters tells the installer what keys to be accepted.
Retail versions has last 3 characters 000, and
OEM versions has those 3 characters OEM, whereas
Volume licence keys will be accepted as 270

[Hybr!d]

You may be right phill, i have never looked into it, just never had an issue with that.

Using a XP Home integrated SP2 key with XP Home SP1 integrated CD however is a different case.

[philthomas]

The only reason I knew, was ... a few years back I met the same situation as the OP and after loads of headbanging, I found the relevant info .... good old M$