Trouble with installing Windows XP PRO

I am trying to install windows xp pro, and aparently the CD Key (on the yellow sticker on the back of the cd case) "is not a valid CD key "... what is going on, i know that it is valid, because i got it from school (a little "gift" for attending my college is XP PRO, office XP, and Visual Studio .net
Office worked just fine when i installed it a while ago... those keys worked

I just tried it again, and it DOES NOT WORK....

thanks for the help,
Jason

 

Here's some reference material:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310637

So, please explain in detail exactly what you are doing. Are you installing to a blank hard drive or is there something already on it? Did you try to start setup from Windows or did you boot from the CD? Did you remove partitions or create any, and are there any other drives on the machine with anything on them?

I'm a bit confused since you said that Office worked and you couldn't install Office without installing XP first, unless we are talking about different machines.

 

Different machines... I installed office on my notebook

I was actually trying to install over another OS hoping that i could possibly salvage some of the stuff in the HD, then format and clean install... but something was not working. I forgot what the error message was, but it was causing a blue screen during the XP Boot screen, which normally means faulty driver info... the problem I was having was that I could not get the key to work... I recently gave up (as of 20 minutes ago, 11:30 Central) and formatted the HD into 2 NTFS partitions, one 2 gig for the OS and critical stuff, like antivirus AdAware and firewall, and a 248 gig for everything else... the only problem now, my computer does not exactly support XP, the SONY VAIO is made for Windows XP Media Edition; but, i have to now wait the 4 business days for them to ship it here so i can actually use my computer with all of its features intact.

It seems that i more or less solved my problem. It is only a shame that I could not save the files on my computer... i was working on a security update for the firefox browser that would of gotten me $500, not to mention the of the software that I now have to reinstall. Oh well, I will get over it

Thanks,
Absent