installing Windows using the key that's on the PC case?

ICIT2LOL said:

Mate there is no way known to man I would buy a copy of Windows from EBay - you need to go to a reputable site and get an OEM from there. Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit-Newegg.com would be ok.

Having said that I find Ubuntu and Zorin the latter especially really good the only thing I don't like about them is the way you need to navigate sometimes using the "command line" to do so. I could be doing things wrong but that is what I find it does.

Now while I am thinking of it those Linux OS's are really good for recovering data from old drives if you need too and the drive can have any OS on them Windows, Linux of any flavour etc etc

I bought Windows 98SE and Windows XP Home Edition on eBay, waiting for them to show up in the mail. I always buy Windows 7 and Windows 10 from either Newegg.com or Microcenter. 98SE and XP look to be genuine and full retail versions, not the OEM stuff with Dell or HP on the packaging.

Why did I get these two computers? For one, they were free. I'm also learning more about computers and if I break something I won't feel as bad as if it happened to my gaming monster that I built.

I need to buy HDD's and memory. 2GB is too little, I'm thinking install the max each system will hold. For HDD's, I've been looking at the WD blue drives. 500GB should be good but it looks like the 1TB drives are cheaper ??

I have a spare SSD that I can use for now, install a distro of Linux, and mess around with that.

I blew out both computers at work but they still need to be cleaned. None of the computers at work are ever cleaned. Is it like that at every business?

The 320 has an Intel Pentium 4 3.20GHz with 1GB of memory.

Both machines have DDR2. I still need to clean them and see what else might be missing. The 320 has a loose ribbon cable (I'm thinking floppy, haven't looked at the manual yet). I still need to see what memory and hard drive I want to install into these computers.

I've used hwinfo and speccy before but I can't do anything at the moment because the HDD's were removed prior to me receiving the computers (I got the CPU and memory info from the BIOS).
I've been looking around inside of the 320 and I found 4 bad caps. There might be more but I need to remove the board to have a good look. Now that I've seen those I'm going to look at the 755 closer. I'll probably solder new caps and replace the CR 2032 battery while I'm in there.

Looks like they just started leaking. The board around the caps is fine. I found a pack of 10 for $14.99 on amazon.

I wonder if my local Radio Shack has them.

edit: bought a pack of ten on amazon (1800 micro farad, 6.3 volts)