>And the bootable disketter has some numbers on it, but not COA numbers to me. under All Rights Reserved on the diskette label it has 3 rows of numbers.
>AK-RP3QA-CA
>242569-004
>MPR171053
>
>None of those are COA I doubt.
>
>If worse comes to worse I will borrow a number from a Compaq Windows 95 COA at work so I don't waste any more time and money. I imagine that's illegal, but Compaq is a pain to contact. And I am not too hot on their Compaq forums and how they work either.

You're talking about doing an illegal install of Win95 on a forum visited by Microsoft employees? Brave man... :) I wonder if BSA employees get percentages of the 'negotiated license fee'?

You could, of course, install Linux on as many PCs as you want, freely and legally. I'll even send you a distro, if you pay postage. :)