A retail edition won't work with the COA, only an OEM one, probably from acer, possibly generic oem.

This is first time I've ever had a media center system.

I saw the words royalty key and was like WHHHAAAT!
Website i found had a list of them for all pc manurfactures, so confused me.

Makes sence what you say John, so i'll have to find a retail edition that works with this COA or change the pid number on my disk.

Cheers

Are you using an oem disc or a disc you normally use?

They key on the bottom will only work with a certain type of disc.

The key on the COA label also won't have been used to install windows originally, the oem discs install without a key when they detect the bios, it'll just come up with the standard acer key which will be the royalty one.

Hello,

I have a Acer laptop im repairing for a customer which had Windows Xp Media Center 2005 on it.
The laptop got a virus and spacked out, but i managed to save most of his personal data. As i was recording the office 2003 product key i also noticed the windows product key wasnt the same as the COA Label. strange....

I type the product key that was being used by the laptop in google and got a few hits. Its called an Acer royalty key.

When i install windows it wont accpet the product key on the COA label or this royalty key.

My question is: What is a royalty key?

Thanks Chris