windows xp home question

[Elspuddy]

o.k, i'm thinking for formating my laptop soon, but what is stoping me is do i have to call M$ up to reactavate xp home after i format ??

[MiniMarc]

I always *thought* that as long as you keep the activation code you only had to contact M$ if you made any hardware changes (which is highly unlikely in a laptop) so in theory you shouldnt need to contact them again, but then I've never done it so I havent got much of a clue beyond vague ideas

[directhex]

you usually get about 5 effortless online activations with a home MS product, subsequently you'll need to do a phone activation (which isn't as scary as it sounds, i ended up activating my XP Pro 20-odd times with various formats going on).

[Dave_07]

How can you tell if your product has been activated correctly?