just a note.
if you buy a home-made pc from a flea market that the builder spent the money, bought the o.s., installed it, activated it, and validated it through microsoft, but now is nowhere to be found, then what do you do? microsoft has the records, all you have to do, is call. i'm sure a home pc builder, such as myself do not put a sticker on the side of the computer. in this case, the pc is dell. it should have a sticker. i have sold a few older dell's and hp's to individuals that had no stickers on them. but did have the oem cd's and cd keys. microsoft can verify if the installed o.s. is legit or not. you can even do it online. i don't see any problem with anybody trying to discover his own product key or product id on an installed o.s. let's not be microsoft's police. and let them validate or invalidate it, once the key is found. however, this fellow, is stuck on a domain logon issue. can't even get far enough to find the key. some government agencies do sell surplus pc's with logon software still on them. this is the issue: how does he get past the domain logon barrier, which has nothing to do with windows o.s.
