Question re: COA but no software

  • Thread starter Thread starter System Admin in Ohio
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System Admin in Ohio

My employer recently purchased some computers at a local auction. The
company that sold them was closing one of their offices.

The computers have Certificates of Authenticity labels for Windows 2000
Professional, which appear to be legit. However, the hard drives are blank
(on boot: "No operating system found."), and no media (CDs, etc.) was
included in the sale.

Can we legally install Windows 2000 on these machines?

If not, what happened to the OEM license that was supposed to be included
with these machines?

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
I would say YES. The license belong to the PC and COA label is the proof
that you have it regardless of the missing media.
 
from the wonderful said:
My employer recently purchased some computers at a local auction. The
company that sold them was closing one of their offices.

The computers have Certificates of Authenticity labels for Windows 2000
Professional, which appear to be legit. However, the hard drives are blank
(on boot: "No operating system found."), and no media (CDs, etc.) was
included in the sale.

Can we legally install Windows 2000 on these machines?
Click to expand...

IMO Yes, if you have the COA, and the keys work, then you just need the
media .. I assume that the company wiped all the disks before selling
the PC's (normal practise .. except for high security applications,
where we drill holes through the platters, or crush/melt the entire disk
drive).

MS will probably sell you a replacement Win2k CD, if you can't find one
elsewhere.
 
I ended up calling Microsoft, and they confirmed that the computers no
longer have operating system licenses.

To legally install Windows 2000 on them we would need to purchase licenses
for the machines. (Retail licenses I'm assuming, since they no longer sell
volume licenses that I know of.)

Thanks for your help anyway.
 
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