It is a fact of life for anyone interested in computers that they become IT troubleshooter for friends, not to mention friends of friends. Nothing wrong with that, except when what seems like a simple job turns into a major hassle – and expecially so when the hassles come from the PC or software vendors or both.

A friend's Dell Dimension, perhaps three years old, had gone on a go-slow and, as it was used mostly for emails and had little software loaded, I offered to do a quick clean reinstall as the easiest way to fix it.

If he had got a Windows XP Home Edition disk with the PC, he had lost it. But I had a copy, and could use the licence number printed on the side of the Dell system box, so there was no question of stealing software if I used it for the reinstall.

Accordingly I reformatted the C-drive and began. There was no problem until I was asked for the licence number, which was promptly rejected. Microsoft told me it was Dell's problem.

Dell told me that the machine might have recovery code in a hidden partition, accessible by clicking Control-F11. This did not work; there was indeed a hidden partition but it appeared to contain only a hardware diagnostics utility.

Dell's support man told me the only alternative was to buy another copy of XP… in effect to pay a second time for the same code.

Dell's support staff in India (of whom, incidentally, I have had good reports) are supposed to be ringing me this evening to take me through the recovery procedure again but I don't hold out much hope. I've already had hours of unnecessary hassle, which appears to be a case of anti-piracy measures acting against the interests of legitimate users.