Vista/XP Licences.

[slipd]

Hey guys,

An indirect friend of mine has bought two new laptops (Acer I think?) from a high street shop. They were both pre-loaded with Vista (Either Basic or Premium) but because she’d ‘heard’ that Vista wasn’t very good, she asked if they could be supplied blank, so that an existing activated version of XP could be loaded on them, I don’t think any reduction in price was offered, so I’m assuming they still have their Vista keys/licences with them.

After an explanation by me about XP/Activation/Licence etc, she now has two laptops sitting on the shelf doing nothing

What I need to know is, is IF the laptops still have their Vista keys/licences, would she be able to legitimately downgrade to XP with them? I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that it’s possible, although I’m not 100%.

Failing that, I guess her other options are pretty obvious

Cheers,

SW.

 

[stoofa]

The High Street store would have been unable to supply the laptops "Blank".
All manufacturers get into license agreements directly with Microsoft so that certainly any "branded" laptop will come with a version of Windows.
Now if that store has blanked the machines for the customer that is a different matter.
It's true there would have been no reduction in price - the end user would have had to return the OEM package back to Acer for example prior to agreeing to the license agreement.

OEM OS licenses do NOT allow downgrade rights with the following exceptions:

Vista Business
Vista Ultimate

Both of these can be downgraded so as you can legally run Windows XP Professional.
There are no downgrade rights with Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium.
More information can be found in this document:

http://download.microsoft.com/downl...9d-4996-b198-7b9d3fe15611/downgrade_chart.doc

So if the user wants to get some use out of these laptops they will either need to use the Vista licenses that shipped with the machines or they will need to buy Windows XP licenses.
If they must stick to Windows XP - a couple of XP Home OEM licenses should be fine as it is highly unlikely you'll ever be doing a motherboard swap in a laptop.

 

[SB118]

I asked the same question a couple weeks ago, the answer is no unless they have one of the top tier versions.

 

[Caged]

Incidentally how do you exercise your downgrade rights? I'm assuming the license key on a Vista Business sticker won't be accepted by XP Professional, so how can you legally downgrade?

 

[Burnsy2023]

Incidentally how do you exercise your downgrade rights? I'm assuming the license key on a Vista Business sticker won't be accepted by XP Professional, so how can you legally downgrade?

Ah ha...

This by Microsft's admission is a messy process. Quite simply use another product key and media from another computer.

Microsoft have said it's your own problem to obtain Media and product keys and that you can't get them from MS.

Burnsy