A friend has let someone put a copy of Windows XP on her machine.  The registration # must not be correct (it could be a "borrowed copy") so the machine times out when hooked up to the internet.  I'm assuming it's connecting to Redmond and not correctly validating.  Anyway, someone has said they have some numbers that will work.  Is this a possibility or should she just buy her own copy and go from there?

Borrow a copy - go to jail.  Just loading it and then going on the net will tell them you "borrowed" it from someone else

Tel her to buy a copy..........damn!!

What is it $100 bucks?

I don't know a single person who has paid for any ms products.

"Go to jail" A little paranoild dude ?

By going online you are ms can not tell that you did'nt buy your own copy.

Paranoid - yup!  

Worked for big company a few years ago - they had an Audit of their MS products - site licences etc. Big fines and lots of time spent on making sure eveyone was holding legal copies etc.

YMMV

You honestly don't know ANYONE who has a paid for a MS product?  I know lots who have "copies" but most all of my coherts in Small business (member of a few groups) have legit and up to date MS products.

good luck

I'll call out right off the bat that I work for MS in Redmond.  How would you like it if I went to your place of business and started stealing things off the shelf that had planned on selling?  Or how about if I then started giving that stuff away to your *former* customers?

Do you steal your gas from the 7-11 too?

Just buy the software, it makes life a lot easier if you have to do reinstall at a later time.

I unknowingly bought a copy of MS Office XP Professional on the internet a while back. I should have known, I paid $125.00 for a $500.00 program. Anyhow, it arrives on a writeable disk with a CD Key#. It installs and runs fine, no problems. Then I decide to upgrade to Windows XP, I have all kinds of installation problems with my retail XP uppgrade. I called MS customer support and during the trouble shooting phase he discovers that I have a pirated copy of XP Office. Using the CD Key we determine that it has a corporate license, meaning someone at a big company copied it and was selling it on the internet. The MS support guy simply stated that it was'nt eligible for MS support and he continued helping me with my XP upgrade.

Thanks to everyone for your replies.  It was my original advice to this friend that she get a whole new computer with Windows XP but trying to save $ she let some other people influence her.  I'm a Mac user and buy my software and even pay for shareware IF I use it.  I will give her the results of this thread and let her make up her mind.  

Thanks again to all.