Will said:
Hi Joseph
I still stand by my posting - not all OEM CDs are regarded as a "qualifying product" - pointing to:
You need to make a distinction between the 'qualifying product', in the
shape of the previous OS as installed, and the CD taken as evidence of
your having this product at the time of a clean install. That is where
a lot of OEM supplied CDs do not work, because they do not contain
normal files, but some image of the initial installed system, to be
restored, even though the product, when restored, does qualify.
In such a case, the approach for a clean install with an upgrade CD has
to be to Run the CD from the existing system. Enter Install, change
Upgrade to New Install, then when it asks you to confirm where, you can
hit ESC and get the chance to select the current partition, delete it,
and create a new RAW one, going on to format it as part of the setup
By that time the eligibility will have been satisfied because it was a
qualifying system it ran from.
And of course an upgrade will run. For those though you need to ensure
that there are not custom, proprietary aspects of the machine that need
a custom version of the OS. I would in particular be very hesitant
about trying to upgrade a Compaq
There is one particular case - Win95, where you *can't* run the upgrade
CD from the system, but a 'proper' Win95, not restore one, is accepted
as evidence. But it is almost certainly a bad idea to try on hardware
that was OK for Win95
