I did a few installations of Windows 3.1 - with floppy disks! 10 or was it 12 - you had to sit and eject & insert disks at the screen prompts - it took ages - no short cuts. With internet connections as rare as hens' teeth, the serial numbers were used time & time again with no fear of being caught...........Very similar tale Dave, only I dabbled with a mate mid to late 80's. Windows 3.1 era!! HD's less than the average stick of RAM in the 90's.
When I built my own, I used the most expensive mother boards, graphic and sound cards, banks of HD's and used the cheapest case I could find!! Working on the premise of someone looked at my awful case they would think it not worth nicking!!!
It was a good time to learn. Banging phrased or terms like POST, autoexec.bat files, Epromms etc and other such jargon!! Thank goodness it's all done for us these days!!
Dave