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Microsoft recently expanded its refurbishing rules to benefit companies who want to refurbish and re-sell their old PCs to new customers. The Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher (MAR) program lets OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) that take old computers and rehab them for resale license Windows for those PCs in bulk.

The MAR program is an offshoot of its current Community MAR, which is designed for charities, educational institutions and nonprofits.

"Companies don't know what to do with their old PCs, so they collect dust in the company cafeteria or stack up in the hallways," Hani Shakeel, senior product manager of the Genuine Windows Product Marketing team said in a statement. "This is a very common fate for PCs these days, especially with the increased environmental regulations around the disposal of computers."

That's because, to properly resell a refurbished PC using its original copy of Windows, Microsoft requires that resellers have either the "certificate of authenticity" that came with the PC or its restore disks--things that often get lost along the way. Businesses can also try to get a duplicate copy from the manufacturer, but that's a difficult and time-consuming process that doesn't scale well for the large refurbisher handling thousands of machines a month.

That’s where the MAR program comes into play. The new Windows licenses for refurbished PCs that are available through MAR are the Windows XP Home for Refurbished PCs and Windows XP Professional for Refurbished PCs.

For Microsoft, the refurbished PC market is an area worthy of more attention. In 2004, Microsoft conducted a joint study with Gartner that focused on the secondary market, Shakeel noted. What the company found was 150 million PCs of which about 20 million were refurbished and then resold. Currently, Microsoft is projecting that 28 million PCs make up the refurbished market -- an estimated 10% slice of the worldwide PC market pie.