I work on a lot of my friends computers and a few of them needed to be reformatted or needed upgradi

the problem is alot of them have misplaced the software cds or has brought computers at yardsales or fleamarket and never had the cds. In one case I went to a fleamarket where one computer was purchased and asked about the software. The owner of the booth was selling computers loaded with XP home, Quicken

2003, XP Office2003, and Symantec AntiVirus. I told him about the pc that my friend needed me to repair and that she bought it from him about a year ago and the warrenty had expired. I asked him about getting a copy of the software to reload the computer. He told me that the software was his own software and he do not sale it but he would reload the pc but for a much higher fee than I was charging my friend. I asked him was the Operating System Authenicated by Microsoft and he said no it was his software. But all of them are activated. My question is what does he means his software. How can he load all of these computers with the same copy and all of them are activated.

I work on a lot of my friends computers and a few of them needed to be reformatted or needed upgrading?network security

It sounds like he is selling illegal copies of the software on the computer.

He is most likely duplicating the harddrives in the systems. This can be done with a program like ghost.

It allows you to make an exact duplicate of a computer. I would not recommend using this guy at all for anything.