You'll need the OEM install CD for your laptop to be able to use the OEM serial that came with your machine. You won't have to worry about windows activation with it.
If the machine shipped with XP preloaded it should have whats called System Locked Preinstallation. You can turn any OEM XP install into a Royalty OEM SLP install by substituing the OEMBIOS files matching your vendor for the ones included by windows. You then need only use the generic XP OEM key from microsoft:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457078.aspxDoing the OEMBIOS file replacement has to be done from safemode or another windows install to get around windows file protection. there is a backup copy of oembios.* in C:\windows\system32\dllcache, you will want to replace or remove those. oembios.dat oembios.sig and oembios.bin belong in system32, and oembios.cat belongs in catroot\{f...... folder. Theres plenty of guides on how to do this. It is the exact method that major brand computers are setup from the factory so they never need activation if you keep the original motherboard.
