Product key COA stoker question

I am trying to reinstall XP pro on my dell. i have a disk that i got and the key on the sticker but the disk and key have some sort of mismatch. is there anyway to tell what version the key works with. the sticker does say xp pro on it. my disk is a dell pro with sp3. i was reading that the number on the sticket that starts with x lets you know what sp the key will will owrk with. is that true

thanks

I don't know anything about Dells...nor about this "disk that i got and the key on the sticker" but Dell has produced many models of systems. Some employ recovery partitions, some do not but rely on recovery disks...some Dells sold in the early part of the 21st century issued disks which were the same as Microsoft XP CDs.

As for your disk with the key...who can say what that relates to? If you can take a photo and post it...maybe someone could render an actual opinion.

Louis

It might help if you were to post the model of this Dell computer.

Where did the disk come from? If it is for a Dell, what model?

A lot of Dells come from the factory pre-activated, so there is a Certificate of Authenticity, but no 25 character alphanumerical code.

If this is the case, about the best you can do with that disk is a repair installation.

sorry i type this kind of quickly as i was leaving work. the sticker is on the side of the dell. which is an optiplex gx280. i have download from the microsoft licensing site the different versions of xp pro. i know that with some dell keys that are on the side of the box you can use an oem disk to reinstall xp using the dell key but i think you have to have the correct sp version in order for that to work. ie if the key on the side is pre sp3 you can not use an disk that has sp3 as part of the install. what i am trying to find is if there is a way to tell what sp version the key might be linked to. after searching online i found that the number that starts with x on the sticker ie x10-60256 might hold the clue to what version it is. does anyone know if this is true and how you use this to tell.

thanks