reinstalling os

kain666

kain666

kain666

Associate
Joined
24 Sep 2010
Posts
233
Location
england
I am upgrading my motherboard and heard that windows is a pain and i would have to buy a new licence key. is this correct or is there a legal way round it?
 
Depends on the type of licence you have. If it's OEM then yes, technically, you should purchase a new licence. If it's a retail copy then you'll be fine. The COA sticker on your PCs case will say whether the licence is oem or retail :).
 
Meatball said:
Depends on the type of licence you have. If it's OEM then yes, technically, you should purchase a new licence. If it's a retail copy then you'll be fine. The COA sticker on your PCs case will say whether the licence is oem or retail :).
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is there a price diffrence between oem and retail
 
Retail tends to be more expensive than OEM. You might be able to change out the board and try activating again over the phone but there's no guarantee as the OEM licence is tied to your system board im afraid.
 
You are entitled by the OEM license to change/upgrade the motherboard if the original was faulty. You will need to go through the MS phone service to reactivate in many cases though.

If it is an upgrade for the sake of upgrading, then you will need a new license. With Retail you can change any hardware you wish at any time.

In terms of price, OEM does tend to be cheaper, but you have many more restrictions. Firstly you can't upgrade your motherboard as said. Also you may not use it on another computer in future. These days Retail isn't that much more expensive, so there is no logical reason to go OEM.
 
SiriusB said:
You are entitled by the OEM license to change/upgrade the motherboard if the original was faulty. You will need to go through the MS phone service to reactivate in many cases though.

If it is an upgrade for the sake of upgrading, then you will need a new license. With Retail you can change any hardware you wish at any time.

In terms of price, OEM does tend to be cheaper, but you have many more restrictions. Firstly you can't upgrade your motherboard as said. Also you may not use it on another computer in future. These days Retail isn't that much more expensive, so there is no logical reason to go OEM.
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can you get a retail cd?
where would you purchase a retail licence?
 
There should be absolutely no problems - you may have to go on line. I assume you have a Disk? What operating system are you using?
 
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