Windows XP Pro OEM SP2c

[jamesbhp]

This week was the first day I found out that Windows XP Pro OEM sp2c CD-KEY doesn't work with Windows XP Pro OEM sp2 CDs. Has anyone come up with a way to distinguish sp2 and sp2c discs?

[Nathan H]

OK Silly Question time.....

But what is SP2C, I've never heard of it before?:o

[jamesbhp]

Seems to be the newer OEM discs from MS. I have not compared the differences between the 2 discs, other than the fact at the company I work for; our recent build to order pcs have been using these discs.

One of the PCs came back for a warranty job after flaking out a week after being built a few weeks ago. We went with a flush and reinstall of Windows XP Pro using one of the OEM discs lying around our tech room. As soon as the installation is done and first windows login, it requires you to authenticate before it will let you into windows. Which was odd because they expect authentication at the login screen without any network drivers installed. We tried to install the network drivers in safe mode, so we can reboot and try authenticating with no luck. When you go to authenticate over phone, no installation id shows up, so you can't manually do it either. So after a little researching, I came across an article regarding the newer sp2c discs released by Microsoft recently. I went and grabbed a new unopened OEM windows xp pro package, which I suspected would be a sp2c disc. Did a repair on the installation, using the sp2c cd key which the computer was originally installed with and it went through fine.