Missing COA - Windows XP Pro OEM

[fredsopwith]

On 21/06/08 I brought a copy of Windows XP Home OEM, to load on my then unbuilt PC.

On surfing Forums for Flight Sims, The opinion was that XP Pro is faster. so back to Novatec to invest £81 in XP Pro on 13/07/08

Built PC - quite easy :)

Just finaly got round to installing XP. Come to prompt - "key in Certificate Of Authenticity"

COA?-- COA! where the **** is that ? Notebook Kindly points out " COA can be found on the back of this book" - not there, "Or on the sticker attached to your computer" - I bult the blinkin thing myself !,( but I did find myself looking).

Out of interest, I opened the XP Home envelope. within is a A4 size note "WARNING tour licence key is affixed to the cellophane or outer layer of this product ect ect"

The XP Home package did indeed have the COA on the outside.

Neither the warning note, or cellophane wrapper, or COA were present in the windows XP Pro package !!!

WHY !!

Have I just made a £81 donation to the Bill Gate$ Foundation, or do I have ANY chance of a refund ?

Or being a total noob am I missing somethig obvious ?


Cheers - Fed Up Fred. :evil:

[TheTranquilEye]

OEM XP Pro should've had a Licence Key included, so maybe back to Novatech?

And despite what you've read on forums, I personally duobt that you'd see any difference between Home and Pro in a flight sim...

TTE

[system7]

FWIW. the exact wording on the Novatech flier in the OEM XP Home package says the stick-on product key should be on the outer cellophane wrapper or attached to the sleeve containing the CD.

XP Pro implements some extra security, reliability and network and backup features, but as TE says, it's hard to see how these will help gaming. :?

[Nox]

Dare I say it, theres no reason why XP pro should be faster than home, if anything the opposite would be true as it has less features in it to slow it down. Realistically though you are looking at <1% difference, if any - nothing noticable certainly. XP compared to vista... now yes, on some systems there is a HUGE difference with XP being faster.

re the CoA... I'd probably try Novatech customer services first, or maybe Coops. Infact, try CS first, theres no guaranteed answer from Coops, and you'll have to wait for him.

Nox

[acbluflame]

Does SP3 implement dual-core features for XP, or is that all Vista?

[system7]

Does SP3 implement dual-core features for XP, or is that all Vista?
SP3 is a combined bundle of patches and tweaks to XP SP2. The new OEM XP SP3 CD is going to save you a lot of updates after install.

Dual (and Quad) core support is there in XP and Vista, regardless. From a programming purist point of view, neither is terribly well optimised for multi-core. But hey, it works. :P

[fredsopwith]

Thanks for the info guys. Concerning the cellophne wrapper, that is the point, there was NO cellophane wrapper, or warning sheet about discarding the wrapper. Who are Coops ? (Forum Member ?)

[Danno]

the oem software is supplied to us from our supplier or direct from microsoft in the envelopes. you will get a cd and small manual type thing with a bit of card wrapped in cellophane and on the cellophane there will be a license key. i have never seen an windows oem pack not come with a product key and we have sold thousands of them. if its was purchased in july unfortunately there is nothing that we can do as missing or incorrect goods must be reported within 7 days of purchase.

[Nox]

Coops is one of the Site Admins, Novatech employee, and is known for 'sorts out/answer problems reported on here from an official standpoint' Looks like Danno got there before him though.

Doesn't look like good news :( You could try Microsoft, they aren't as bad as you think :) Might mean posting/faxing a copy of the purchase receipt off to them.

Nox

[Coops]

What Danno Said.

The COA would have been on the outside plastic wrapper of the windows pack. The fact that you say there was no COA and no wrapper is strange as this will be the first time i have seen this in the nearly 8 years of us selling XP. However because of how long its taken you to report this issue to us, i am not sure what we can do now. This is not something we can deal with on here either. I suggest you contact Customer Service and see what they can do.

Regards