I originally used the restore disc that came with my broken Systemax laptop. That version is XP Home.
During my last reformat, that disc would no longer load XP properly so I used the disc that came with my eMachines desktop PC. I just looked at System Properties and it says that I've got Windows XP Media Center Edition. Is that the reason that my product key that came with my Systemax (XP Home) won't work?
Another bit of information. This is actually the second time I've installed XP from the eMachines disc to the current laptop in question (Toshiba.) I got a virus right after that reformat and thats why I'm doing this again! I'm 99.999999% sure that I activated it then and it worked.
that's exactly why it won't work. media center is a certain kind of xp pro. you need to get a home disc.