My old computer died

[Kristian]

As implied by the title, my old computer died and I need to replace it. I am
curious as to wheter or not it is possible to use my same Vista product key
on my new computer, or if I have to buy an entirely new version.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

If your Vista came preinstalled on your old machine then you cannot use the
product key any more. In particular it would not work with retail copies of
Vista. Also, preinstalled Vista is not transferrable to another computer
even if the old one dies. Preinstalled Vista and the computer are one
product.

If you purchased Vista at retail you may use it on your new computer. Just
how you go about doing that depends on what you are running on the new
computer now and whether your retail copy of Vista is an upgrade edition or
standard.

You need to tell us a few things about your system and your current copy of
Windows before we can fill in the details.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

There is no such thing as a one-time transfer for Windows OSs. If the OS
was preinstalled it may not be moved even once. If it is a retail copy it
may be moved as many times as needed as long as it is not installed on more
than one computer at a time.

Anytime Upgrade licenses were limited to one transfer until Vista SP1
released. Those licenses have been changed in SP1 to allow transfer with
the upgraded Windows if the upgraded Windows is itself transferrable.

 

[Nonny]

The 'one time only' thing did exist, but I had forgotten Microsoft
changed that a while after Vista was released. Thank you for correcting
me.

Read his reply carefully "King". It never existed as you described it
except in your royal imagination.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I think he may be referring to a proposed one-time-rule during Vista beta 1.
It actually appeared in the EULA that accompanied the early builds. The
techbeta folks spotted it right away and raised holy hell because techbeta
testers happen to also be the kind of technology entusiasts who like to keep
up with hardware advances and so tend to move their copies of Windows
several times. The outcry was such that MS relented and dropped making
retail Vista a one-time-transfer license. You have more things to thank the
techbeta testers for than just bug swatting.

It was long gone by the time beta 2 released for public trial through the
CPP in mid-2006. Unfortunately it was blogged during beta 1 (should not
have been) by some techbeta folks and so reached the general public. The
one hangover from all of that was in the Anytime Upgrade license but MS
finally had to give that up too. So he was right and he was wrong. It was
changed before, not after, Vista released.

 

[PD43]

I think he may be referring to a proposed one-time-rule during Vista beta 1.

Thanks for the info, Colin... but IMO it doesn't look as if "the King"
is that computer savvy.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You never know what kinds of things folks read. It was prominently
discussed on Paul Thurott's Supersite at the time and that is fairly widely
read.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

But read my reply to Nonny for some details about what really did happen.