Same version of WIN98 SE on 2 different systems

I know someone who just bought a system secondhand and the person who sold it to him left WIN98 SE installed on the system, but did not hand over the WIN98 SE software (CD).

The reason being that the person who sold the system was buying a new one and they intended installing WIN98 SE on their system.

This is probably a dumb paranoid question, but does anyone know if problems will arise if 2 systems have the same WIN98 SE key.

Obviously if you were not on the net there wouldn't be a problem, but if my fiend and the guy that sold him the computer (both of which have the same copy of WIN 98 SE installed)logged onto the net, will problems arise? Will Microsfot potentially establish that the same copy has been illegally installed and do something to one of the systems.

As an example using different software, If you play Half Life or Counterstrike online, like I do, it authenticates with WON everytime you log on. I assume that authentication process checks the Half Life CD key and authenticates it. However, if someone else was currently logged onto a Half Life server with the same CD KEY (either the illegal or the original copy), then the second person (regardless of whether they hold the original, legal version) will not be allowed access to the server, because the WON authentication will fail.

Therefore, will similar problems arise if 2 people have the same copy of WIN98 SE installed on their systems. Obviously the lengthy access code that you need to type in when you first installl win 98 SE will be the same on both systems.

Thanks

Nope - no problem whatsoever. A number of Microsoft corporate software releases have the Product Key hard-coded into them, so there are tens of thousands of machines out there with the same number, and they work just fine.

All six of my computers run the same version of Windows98 SE off of the same installation CD. They are all networked and everything and there has never been any probelms.