Transfering Vista Licence?

[FNUSNU]

I bought a laptop with XP MCE and later bought a Vista upgrade. The laptop
has died (only 16 months old!) and wont be repaired. Can I transfer the
Vista OS and licence to my home computer? Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Nonny]

I bought a laptop with XP MCE and later bought a Vista upgrade. The laptop
has died (only 16 months old!) and wont be repaired. Can I transfer the
Vista OS and licence to my home computer? Any help would be appreciated!

You need a working XP operating system as a starting point to do what
you want.

If your desktop is running XP, then start the upgrade from within
Windows. You can't perform the upgrade by booting to the Vista CD.

 

[Dominic Payer]

A retail Vista upgrade is legally transferable. It replaces the OEM XP MCE.

To install the Vista upgrade edition to your home PC you must be running a
qualifying Windows version on your home PC. There is a workround: you can
install a trial version of the Vista edition you purchased on a new
partition by not entering a product key and selecting the version you
purchased and then upgrading from that, entering your product key this time.

You will probably need to use phone activation to explain why the Vista
edition is no longer on the initially activated hardware.

 

[FNUSNU]

Sorry Dominic, I should have said; it was an upgrade I paid for as part of a
buy your laptop now and upgrade to Vista later deal. Is it still the same as
an off the shelf retail upgrade? My home computer is XP Home. Cheers mate!

 

[Dominic Payer]

I'm not familiar with the Dell Vista Upgrade, but think it just replaces
your XP MCE OEM licence with a Vista OEM licence. If that is so, it can't
legally be transferred and is probably BIOS locked so it wouldn't install on
anything but a Dell motherboard anyway.

If your home computer is a Dell, it might install. I can't say if it would
be legal.

 

[C.B.]

Sorry Dominic, I should have said; it was an upgrade I paid for as part of
a
buy your laptop now and upgrade to Vista later deal. Is it still the same
as
an off the shelf retail upgrade? My home computer is XP Home. Cheers
mate!

No, an OEM upgrade is not the same as a retail upgrade, and no, you
cannot transfer it to another computer as it is locked to the motherboard of
the laptop. You could have purchased an extended warranty. I'm not
criticizing you for not doing so. It's a personal decision. I always go with
a three to five year extended warranty. An extended warranty is well worth
the extra money.
If you purchase the "full" retail Vista edition you can transfer it to
any computer you wish, as many times as you wish, as long as it is installed
on only one computer at a time.

C.B.

 

[Canuck57]

No, an OEM upgrade is not the same as a retail upgrade, and no, you
cannot transfer it to another computer as it is locked to the motherboard
of the laptop. You could have purchased an extended warranty. I'm not
criticizing you for not doing so. It's a personal decision. I always go
with a three to five year extended warranty. An extended warranty is well
worth the extra money.
If you purchase the "full" retail Vista edition you can transfer it to
any computer you wish, as many times as you wish, as long as it is
installed on only one computer at a time.

C.B.

I guess then us sub human OEM users are SOL.

Someone aught to put tags on the new PCs saying "Sub-version of Vista,
limited license."

But it is, buyer beware.