If you have the XP key on the side of the machine, I believe activation is automatic from OEMs, which is tied within the BIOS.

If you want to test first, install a different hard drive in the machine and see how far you can get, but you need a Dell copy of XP.

Otherwise, wipe the machine. There is no need to take the risk of some kind of infection or something worse.

There are other ways to get XP activated without using cracks or the consumer version, but I don't believe we are allowed to describe the alternative here, which might promote license violations.

I own a number of that series, a D630, D620, D800 and two D830s and they are rock solid little laptops, I bought new batteries for them all so I cant speak to the old batteries but the new ones have never skipped a beat.

I took one of my D830s and upgraded it as far as I could .. its now running a X9000, 8 gb of ram, Quadro GPU, 2 TB SSD and a AC 7260HMW, It came with a clean Windows 7 x64 so I just left that on there, its quite honestly a really nice secondary machine.

Look on the bottom of your D610 and see if there is a COA on it, all mine came with a COA stuck to the bottom and as far as I can remember XP just needs the key I dont believe it'll bother with activation if it doesnt have internet access, but you can just plug in a network cable and let it activate if it really needs it.

Back then, I was given a D600 and does works ok for awhile but slows down so much with time as software versions got upgraded. Had to repair then later on, blew again, had to replace motherboard. Was running XP all throughout.

In other words not so great notebooks. Compared to better thinkpads with pentium M, D600 and D610 is garbage to me, I had D800 and was not so great either, hot too. There are better notebooks using C2D mobile out there. I like T500 for this and amazingly usable still even slower but workable and cooler. Even another notebooks with C2D and pair it with Intel 5300 N wifi sped it up too.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-01-29, 18:45:

Back then, I was given a D600 and does works ok for awhile but slows down so much with time as software versions got upgraded. Had to repair then later on, blew again, had to replace motherboard. Was running XP all throughout.

In other words not so great notebooks. Compared to better thinkpads with pentium M, D600 and D610 is garbage to me, I had D800 and was not so great either, hot too. There are better notebooks using C2D mobile out there. I like T500 for this and amazingly usable still even slower but workable and cooler. Even another notebooks with C2D and pair it with Intel 5300 N wifi sped it up too.

Cheers,

I did have to repaste and replace the cooler in the one I upgraded but other than that its been rock solid since.

It has a product key for XP on the bottom of it. I have long since lost my recovery discs for my original laptop, but I can see if dell still hosts it.

I'll try an ebay battery, but I have low expectations.

Problem with XP is the ISO differs between releases. So you can't just use any old copy of XP
If you want to use the OEM key you'll need to find a Dell OEM disc. Also typically the disc would only work on certain range of product's not Dell's entire range.
It's not all bad news, places like archive.org have multiple iso's so its just a matter of trial and error.

or

You can just find a volume licence iso and key and bypass the whole hassle. The laptop IS licenced for XP after all, I mean technically your not supposed to use volume licence media but then they are the ones that turned off the activation server!