If you ever find yourself in a situation were you have a retail cd key and a OEM version of XP, or any combination for that fact. There is a little trick you can perform thanks to the file setup.ini. It will allow you to install the version of windows you want that matches your key.
First, find your setupp.ini file in the i386 directory on your Windows XP CD. If you look at it, it will resemble:
ExtraData=707A667567736F696F697911AE7E05
Pid=55034000
The Pid value is what we’re in this for. What’s there now looks like a standard default, but that is no good. There are special numbers that determine if it’s a retail, OEM, or volume license edition. First, we must break down that number into two parts. The first five digits determines how the CD will behave, i.e. is it a retail CD that lets you clean install or upgrade, or an OEM CD that only lets you perform a clean install? The last three digits determine what CD key it will accept.
You are able to mix and match these values. For example you could make a Windows XP CD that acted like a retail CD, but then yet accepted OEM keys.
This is in my opinion a very useful tweak if done properly, so listen up!
Here are the individual values, the first and last values are interchangeable but you should keep them together:
Retail = 51882 335
Volume License = 51883 270
OEM = 82503 OEM
Now if you wanted a retail CD that accepted the retail CD key then you would use.
Pid=51882335
And if you wanted a retail CD that accepted OEM keys, you’d use:
Pid=51882OEM
You should remember that doing this might be considered illegal in Microsoft’s eyes so as such it’s not something I would recommend to do.
Now if all went without typo’s all you need to to is burn your XP cd and make it bootable.