There's more BS to go through in Vista since AFAIK nobody knows of a student key for that but I will put similar info in the Vista/7 forum when I get the time to look it up.  I know it's out there but I haven't had the need to bookmark it because I never used Vista for more than a few hours at a time to test something and with 7 the beta keys from MS are still good but that won't last much longer.  It would have been nice to have had this info posted here on XP YEARS ago but oh well better late than never :)

The point is... if you're trying to install windows from a CD that came with a computer and you don't know the original CD key, forget it unless you want to use cracks and key changers.  The student key apparently won't work on discs that were originally OEM or retail type licensing or whatever - and you can find out what that type is by looking for that setupp.ini file on the disc.

One tidbit regarding slipstreaming:  DON'T SLIPSTREAM a service pack into XP using VISTA OR 7!  You'll make a perfectly good disc/files BUT it messes up the licensing... i.e. a volume license disc will no longer accept a volume license key.  It's messed up but true.  WTG Microsoft.  You need to have XP running as your OS when you slipstream an SP into an XP file set... even if it's a virtual XP running on 7 that works just fine.

Just an edit to update the fact that the student key no longer works for XP - blacklisted awhile ago.  It doesn't change most of the good info here though.