Using a single Windows 8 Licence twice on the same machine

spudbynight · 18 Aug 2013 at 14:59

I have a legit licence for Windows 8 Pro. (One of the cheap pre-release keys)

At the moment I use it in a VMWare Fusion Virtual Machine on my iMac.

I use Windows 7 under bootcamp. Can I use the same licence to upgrade my bootcamp partition to run on Windows 8?

Rroff · 18 Aug 2013 at 15:10

You will probably only have 1 of those 2 installs authorised as the VM will emulate a certain amount of hardware making it look like 2 different machines.

Caged · 18 Aug 2013 at 15:17

I think a Windows client license gives you the rights to run up to 4 copies of that same OS as virtual machines on the same host as the client license applies to. Not sure if this changed with Windows 8, Microsoft are extremely vague about it as usual.

RHS · 18 Aug 2013 at 20:43

Basically it works like this....

1. Would you like to activate on the Internet?
2. Erm no thanks Ill ring Microsoft and activate by phone.
3. Have you installed the OS on more than one PC, well no.
4. Punch in very long code from MS and your done.

Burnsy2023 · 18 Aug 2013 at 21:26

Caged said:
I think a Windows client license gives you the rights to run up to 4 copies of that same OS as virtual machines on the same host as the client license applies to. Not sure if this changed with Windows 8, Microsoft are extremely vague about it as usual.

That was the case with Server 2008 R2, but not clients.

Have you read the EULA? Get the run box open and type EULA.txt

V F · 18 Aug 2013 at 22:12

RHS said:
4. Punch in very long code from MS and your done.

I'll say. But it's two lots of code. 9 sections of 5 digits into the phone, generated, then the same back into the OS.

RHS · 19 Aug 2013 at 15:42

To expect home users to pay multiple "Windows tax" for essentially testing and learning is a little harsh imo.

If you have multiple physical pc's then fair enough cough up, its not as if a domestic user is running a commercial enterprise for profit. £80 quid for a rubbish OS is hard to swallow, fortunately I availed of the £15 quid offer for a rubbish OS so don't feel too hard done by

Caged · 20 Aug 2013 at 14:38

Burnsy2023 said:
That was the case with Server 2008 R2, but not clients.

Have you read the EULA? Get the run box open and type EULA.txt

It was definitely the case for Windows 7 "Pro" variants. It needed SA though.

spudbynight · 23 Aug 2013 at 11:32

RHS said:
Basically it works like this....

1. Would you like to activate on the Internet?
2. Erm no thanks Ill ring Microsoft and activate by phone.
3. Have you installed the OS on more than one PC, well no.
4. Punch in very long code from MS and your done.

Did this.

jeffa123 · 25 Aug 2013 at 02:41

Also looking at the software, and any Windows OS from XP up supports RAID. RAID Mirror is basically two identical installations of windows on two hard drives on the same machine and that is not illegal and you are using them at the same time. This may sound simple but is in the Eula.