It sounds like you were trying to activate the OEM key on your netbook using retail media.
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Yes, that's the case. Unfortunately, ASUS didn't provide installation media, just recovery media, which only works for their 4GB/12GB SSD combo and was failing operation when I tried it on a new SSD. So I tried regular XP Home ISO, but was out of luck.
I'm not a Windows licensing expert, but this is basically how it works:
1. You can't use the OEM license with retail installation media.
2. You don't get OEM installation media because the license is tied to the hardware.
3. The OEM recovery media can't be restored to different hardware.
4. The OEM license key can't be used to install a retail Windows install on a different computer.
It's a strange situation when a Windows licensing expert is actually a thing.
If you think that's bad, you can get Microsoft Certified Professional certified on licensing. On at least 3 separate exams. I am certified on licensing.
Commercial software licensing has always been a PITA, especially at the enterprise level. I just thank sweet baby Jesus every day I don't have to deal with IBM or Oracle.
There must be a chart somewhere that shows customer lifetime value vs. churn vs. licensing complexity.
At some low number of customers, the more complex you make your licensing, the fewer people buy and the fewer people renew, and since piracy is roughly zero anyway, you make your licensing simple.
Then something magical happens somewhere in the middle, where either piracy becomes scarier or your customers are more locked into your ecosystem. Then the more complex you make your licensing, for some reason the more profit you can get out of your customers. It must be this way, otherwise we'd have no way to account for MS/Oracle/IBM.
I wonder where the crossover points on the chart are.
* How much piracy do you take before you make your licensing a nightmare?
* How "enterprise" do you have to go before you stop worrying that making your software a massive pain to install and upgrade won't bleed your customers away?
Simply wonderful! ReactOS is really needed...
I feel you. It really sucks that ASUS's recovery media doesn't let you replace or upgrade your memory or storage. Those are user-serviceable parts, IMO.
I am not sure if ASUS won't allow it by principle, but Eee PC 901 was using odd SSDs based on Mini PCIe with the same form-factor as mSATA SSD, but different electric circuitry, so regular mSATA drives couldn't work and you had to get an adapter converting mini PCIe into mSATA first. And once you plugged it in, primary master disappeared, so I guess that's what confused recovery media. They likely couldn't predict the future of SSD interfaces and were using some early prototypes before standardization.
It is possible to create an OEM install disc.
I've done it once in the past and it wasn't super complicated. It looks like it might be harder to find the oembios files now, but I bet you can still accomplish this if you're determined.
https://superuser.com/questions/539714/windows-all-oem-activ... has some details that could get your pointed in the right direction