I have a toshiba laptop with windows home edition and I also have a pc can I use the installation cd for my laptop and put windows home edition in my pc. Can one household have 2 computers with the same cd for windows that is my question. Thank you

Myself personally would say go for it if one of those computers never was going to be connected to the Internet
But in recent months Microsoft have been clamping down hard on Pirate editions and unauthorised users leaving them with no updates or something else.
You'll have seen the "Genuine Advantage" program run on the Windows update. This sees if your machine passes the rules (1 genuine copy per computer)
Think it was on Windows 98 that they did allow a back-up copy to be made ,but many users were never connected online in those times . That concession was withdrawn a year or 2 ago
I doubt if there is a workaround on this
Ps Buying a 2nd hand copy is also a waste of time as this more than likely will have been logged on Microsofts server

If your CD was provided to you when you bought your Toshiba laptop it is almost certainly "OEM" or Original Equipment Manufacturer software and will run only on the machine it was designed for. If this is the case, the Product Key should have the characters OEM in it. (There should be a sticker affixed to the CD itself, or on a sticker on the bottom of the computer.

If your copy is a Retail version of Windows, previously registered, you can get it registered under your own name for the computer, but it will have to come off of the laptop. (Assuming the license is for one machine).

Read more about licensing here. This link covers several different situations.

Dwight