Please help! Replace dodgy windows 7 with vista with a view to upgrading to 7 again!

K guys everyone needs to chill, seriously,

I'm not murdering someone here I merely said I'd prefer to do what thousands of other people have done and cheat it if I can to save myself some cash.

If you want to make it 100% legit then you do that but I am not going to lose any sleep if my upgrade cheat works and the computer tells itself its fine. So kindly bog off and stop preaching to me in such a selfrighteous way, i havent been arsey at all about any of this im just asking questions. I havent even done anything to it anyway. Im sure none of you are perfect.

To be honest, buying any version of the atrocious Operating System some years back called WINDOWS VISTA should mean that Microsoft GIVE YOU a copy of windows 7 as a way of saying sorry that vista was so bloody terrible. Who's with me on that??!
 
Considering my initial post has done the opposite of help, as I mistakenly thought the PC's current Vista license was a legit OEM one, hopefully this one will go some way to making it better. This is a post by the same Microsoft employee, going into more detail regarding this, and these are some pertinent points:


Again, sorry for my previous post, I was wrong and hopefully this one has been more helpful.

yeah that is clearer now, these guys accusing me of DISTORTING the words of a Microsoft employee is BS i am simply taking exactly what he stated and applying it to my situation, not presuming anything more or less, so chill darn it.

The key word is QUALIFYING software license

i know now that an OEM version is NOT a qualifying version, but the guy didnt say that before.

anyway thanks for all your advice, im going to do what i want.
 
Wow, all this arguing. If microsoft willingly let people activate OEM copies of windows on a second PC, then there you have it, you can't complain. It really doesn't matter.
 
To be honest, buying any version of the atrocious Operating System some years back called WINDOWS VISTA should mean that Microsoft GIVE YOU a copy of windows 7 as a way of saying sorry that vista was so bloody terrible. Who's with me on that??!

Windows 7 is basically Windows Vista with a new suit on. Vista was never that bad, it was just installed on PCs that barely handled Windows XP, so it got the repuation of being slow and bloated when it actually wasn't. The only reason 7 looks so much better is because the baseline of minimum PC specs has gone up a lot in the time between Vista's and 7's releases.
 
Wow, all this arguing. If microsoft willingly let people activate OEM copies of windows on a second PC, then there you have it, you can't complain. It really doesn't matter.

cheers mate. haha look you can do whatever you want on your computer,
im not going to tell you you should cheat the upgrade because i personally think that MS gets too much money in this country, because you can do what you want.

just dont tell me that i am wrong and bad for doing things that thousands of people do and MS are well aware of it.

loves
 
Middle-class and loaded? If you can afford a computer you can afford £105 for the OS. If you can't, then don't upgrade.

Breaching the software license just because Americans get a better deal is not an excuse.

Sorry, that's ********.

My new PC cost me about £200. That was simply new CPU, RAM, motherboard.

As it happens I do need the features of 7 Pro.

In my case, £165 for 7 is almost doubling the cost of the PC. Sorry, but that's absurd.

£40 on the other hand was a decent price. It activates, it behaves like legit Windows, and for all MS know it is legit Windows.
 
Hey FoxEye, when looking at buying the new student upgrade versions of 7 on the student software sites it says they have been altered by MS so you cant cheat them any more, when did you buy your student copy was it within the past couple of months? cos otherwise they might have changed it so you actually cant cheat them and i will not be happy.
 
Windows 7 is basically Windows Vista with a new suit on. Vista was never that bad, it was just installed on PCs that barely handled Windows XP, so it got the repuation of being slow and bloated when it actually wasn't. The only reason 7 looks so much better is because the baseline of minimum PC specs has gone up a lot in the time between Vista's and 7's releases.

nah vista was awful. it constantly crashed out of the box on several of mine and my friends' PCs, OEM or otherwise
 
Hey FoxEye, when looking at buying the new student upgrade versions of 7 on the student software sites it says they have been altered by MS so you cant cheat them any more, when did you buy your student copy was it within the past couple of months? cos otherwise they might have changed it so you actually cant cheat them and i will not be happy.

Yeah I just saw that at s4s.

I bought one copy for me from MS promotional site (the ultimate steal - lol), and one from s4s but before the changes.

I guess that sucks for future buyers. Remember that in the US they give students win7 FULL RETAIL for $29.

MS obviously wants to pass on the cost of all the EU fines it's been receiving to EU customers.

In future I will just download and crack their crap.
 
so does this mean my dream is ruined

i actually cant clean install from the upgrade windows 7,

and furthermore i cant actually put my OEM vista onto my new blank machine because the actual license key wont let me upgrade?
 
so does this mean my dream is ruined

i actually cant clean install from the upgrade windows 7,

and furthermore i cant actually put my OEM vista onto my new blank machine because the actual license key wont let me upgrade?

I'm not sure. Googling suggests this "recent change" was in fact made back in october 2009.

I think you're probably fine mate to do the double install as before. The 2nd copy I bought from s4s was bought in 2010, from s4s, and worked fine.
 
Right, this whole mess is very confusing. Things I've determined:

The student win7 deal is a Retail Upgrade (we all knew that). This means it can be transferred between PCs but is only usable on one machine at a time.

However - this is the bit that never gets fully explained - any time you move the upgrade to a different machine that machine must have a qualifying Windows OS to upgrade from.

On the technet forums, MS weren't saying the 2nd part. A lot of MVPs were simply saying "the student offer is a retail copy and can be moved". They didn't say that any PC you move it to has to have a qualifying OS present.

So in short you could use the win7 upgrade to upgrade an OEM version on one PC, then remove it and use it to upgrade an OEM versoin on a second PC - but you'd need 2x OEM XP or Vista to do this legally.

The whole thing strikes me as very silly, and was very poorly explained by MS staff/associates. They kept saying "it's retail - you can move it but only have it one PC at a time" without explaining the need for having XP/Vista first on any machine you move it to.
 
As far as I'm concerned, I've paid MS a decent chunk of cash and no one is complaining. I'm not "license legal" but I'm not pirating their stuff either.

You might feel better morally at having paid some money, but the fact remains that legally you're no more entitled to use that copy of Windows than someone who downloaded a copy from the net.

FoxEye said:
The student win7 deal is a Retail Upgrade (we all knew that). This means it can be transferred between PCs but is only usable on one machine at a time.

However - this is the bit that never gets fully explained - any time you move the upgrade to a different machine that machine must have a qualifying Windows OS to upgrade from

Why does it need to be fully explained? 'Retail upgrade' tells you everything you need to know. The 'retail' bit implies that it can be transferred. The 'upgrade' bit means that it always has to be installed as an upgrade. Why would there be an exception to the rule if you were reinstalling on a different machine?
 
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You might feel better morally at having paid some money, but the fact remains that legally you're no more entitled to use that copy of Windows than someone who downloaded a copy from the net.

Well then in future that's what I'll do. Download a copy from the net.

The fact remains, shall we say, that spending £165 for my OS when my computer cost £200 is not something that makes sense to me.

Morally right or morally wrong, legally right or legally wrong, people aren't go to pay over the odds for the sake of keeping the MS monopoly healthy.

As for morals, well if MS hadn't used so many anti-competitive practices over the years, maybe we wouldn't all be tied to Windows like we are. oGL might be alive and kicking, Linux might have games, and we'd all be able to tell MS where to stick their overpriced (but decent) OS.
 
Well then in future that's what I'll do. Download a copy from the net.

The fact remains, shall we say, that spending £165 for my OS when my computer cost £200 is not something that makes sense to me.

Morally right or morally wrong, legally right or legally wrong, people aren't go to pay over the odds for the sake of keeping the MS monopoly healthy.

As for morals, well if MS hadn't used so many anti-competitive practices over the years, maybe we wouldn't all be tied to Windows like we are. oGL might be alive and kicking, Linux might have games, and we'd all be able to tell MS where to stick their overpriced (but decent) OS.

That is an excuse for not insuring your car because the cost of the insurance is nearly the same as the value of the car.
Overpriced :confused: To pay around £130 for something that you will use every day for a couple of years is peanuts TBH.
If you use you your PC 3 hours a day, 5 days a week the OS will cost you in the order of 0.17p per hour over a year
 
Well then in future that's what I'll do. Download a copy from the net.

The fact remains, shall we say, that spending £165 for my OS when my computer cost £200 is not something that makes sense to me.

Morally right or morally wrong, legally right or legally wrong, people aren't go to pay over the odds for the sake of keeping the MS monopoly healthy.

As for morals, well if MS hadn't used so many anti-competitive practices over the years, maybe we wouldn't all be tied to Windows like we are. oGL might be alive and kicking, Linux might have games, and we'd all be able to tell MS where to stick their overpriced (but decent) OS.

people buy cars for £200 and then pay for insurance that's usually wildly more expensive than the car it self. that doesn't make sense either but people still do it....why? because being caught without insurance is quite a serious thing. It's just a shame that being caught with a pirated version of windows isn't really dealt with at all.

if you don't like the way MS do business, then why use their software?
 
I think the reason why it gets some people's backs up is that they have gone to some effort to a) find out what they need to be licensed correctly and b) put their hand in their pocket and handed over the cash - neither of which is particularly enjoyable - only for someone to come along, ignore the advice given and try to justify why they should pay less than everybody else.

I'm not referring to anyone in particular, I've seen enough of these threads to last a lifetime and just speaking generally. I couldn't care less and I doubt Microsoft cares much more about the individual. Nobody is going to hunt you down for using an unlicensed copy of Windows any more than for buying a knock off DVD, but just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should.
 
Well then in future that's what I'll do. Download a copy from the net.

The fact remains, shall we say, that spending £165 for my OS when my computer cost £200 is not something that makes sense to me.

Without an OS that £200 is completely useless hardware. The OS is just as important as the CPU or RAM yet you treat it like a necessary evil.

It might suck if the OS costs as much as your upgrade, but those are the prices you have to pay. I am not surprised you are complaining - there have been countless people on these boards who have spent thousands and thousands on hardware they probably don't need, then act all shocked and outraged when they have to pay for the OS.

You already have an OS, and you say you are hard up, so why buy any upgrade at all? It's like wanting the latest GPU then complaining it is expensive.
 
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