Originally posted by: pip22
SP2 is a recipe for disaster for 70% of users.
Huh? What users have you talked to? Most people seem to have no problems with SP2, espically if they just slipstreamed it in. Most of the problems have cropped up from people installing it on systems which already have a bunch of stuff on them.
Sure there's people with problems, but people have had problems with every service pack known to mankind. Its definitly not 70%.
If you're going by message board postings then of course you're going to get the impression SP2 is a piece of junk. Nobody signs on to a message board to create a new thread saying that "I just installed SP2 and my system works great!". They come to the board because they have problems that need to be fixed. You can't get an accurate representation of the number of people with problems vs the number of people who don't have any problems at all from a support message board.
As for the original question: You probably can't just grab any old XP cd because that key is an OEM key. XP installs make the distinction of where your CD key came from. You can't use an OEM cd key with a retail cd, or a retail key with an OEM cd, same thing with MSDN versions. Your best bet would be to call your system manufacturer and see if they can send you another xp cd, or find someone with the same system manufacturer and use their cd.