Transfering Vista Licence?

I bought a laptop with XP MCE and later bought a Vista upgrade. The laptop
has died (only 16 months old!) and wont be repaired. Can I transfer the
Vista OS and licence to my home computer? Any help would be appreciated!

On Sun, 11 May 2008 00:54:00 -0700, FNUSNU
<> wrote:

>I bought a laptop with XP MCE and later bought a Vista upgrade. The laptop
>has died (only 16 months old!) and wont be repaired. Can I transfer the
>Vista OS and licence to my home computer? Any help would be appreciated!

You need a working XP operating system as a starting point to do what
you want.

If your desktop is running XP, then start the upgrade from within
Windows. You can't perform the upgrade by booting to the Vista CD.

A retail Vista upgrade is legally transferable. It replaces the OEM XP MCE.

To install the Vista upgrade edition to your home PC you must be running a
qualifying Windows version on your home PC. There is a workround: you can
install a trial version of the Vista edition you purchased on a new
partition by not entering a product key and selecting the version you
purchased and then upgrading from that, entering your product key this time.

You will probably need to use phone activation to explain why the Vista
edition is no longer on the initially activated hardware.



"FNUSNU" <> wrote in message
news:297B208E-A344-4F7F-B3D9-...
>I bought a laptop with XP MCE and later bought a Vista upgrade. The laptop
> has died (only 16 months old!) and wont be repaired. Can I transfer the
> Vista OS and licence to my home computer? Any help would be appreciated!

Sorry Dominic, I should have said; it was an upgrade I paid for as part of a
buy your laptop now and upgrade to Vista later deal. Is it still the same as
an off the shelf retail upgrade? My home computer is XP Home. Cheers mate!

I'm not familiar with the Dell Vista Upgrade, but think it just replaces
your XP MCE OEM licence with a Vista OEM licence. If that is so, it can't
legally be transferred and is probably BIOS locked so it wouldn't install on
anything but a Dell motherboard anyway.

If your home computer is a Dell, it might install. I can't say if it would
be legal.



"FNUSNU" <> wrote in message
news:077B88CE-A823-4B80-AF42-...
> Sorry Dominic, I should have said; it was an upgrade I paid for as part of
> a
> buy your laptop now and upgrade to Vista later deal. Is it still the same
> as
> an off the shelf retail upgrade? My home computer is XP Home. Cheers
> mate!

"FNUSNU" <> wrote in message
news:077B88CE-A823-4B80-AF42-...
> Sorry Dominic, I should have said; it was an upgrade I paid for as part of
> a
> buy your laptop now and upgrade to Vista later deal. Is it still the same
> as
> an off the shelf retail upgrade? My home computer is XP Home. Cheers
> mate!

No, an OEM upgrade is not the same as a retail upgrade, and no, you
cannot transfer it to another computer as it is locked to the motherboard of
the laptop. You could have purchased an extended warranty. I'm not
criticizing you for not doing so. It's a personal decision. I always go with
a three to five year extended warranty. An extended warranty is well worth
the extra money.
If you purchase the "full" retail Vista edition you can transfer it to
any computer you wish, as many times as you wish, as long as it is installed
on only one computer at a time.

C.B.


--
It is the responsibility and duty of everyone to help the underprivileged
and unfortunate among us.

"C.B." <> wrote in message
news:...
>
>
> "FNUSNU" <> wrote in message
> news:077B88CE-A823-4B80-AF42-...
>> Sorry Dominic, I should have said; it was an upgrade I paid for as part
>> of a
>> buy your laptop now and upgrade to Vista later deal. Is it still the
>> same as
>> an off the shelf retail upgrade? My home computer is XP Home. Cheers
>> mate!
>
> No, an OEM upgrade is not the same as a retail upgrade, and no, you
> cannot transfer it to another computer as it is locked to the motherboard
> of the laptop. You could have purchased an extended warranty. I'm not
> criticizing you for not doing so. It's a personal decision. I always go
> with a three to five year extended warranty. An extended warranty is well
> worth the extra money.
> If you purchase the "full" retail Vista edition you can transfer it to
> any computer you wish, as many times as you wish, as long as it is
> installed on only one computer at a time.
>
> C.B.

I guess then us sub human OEM users are SOL.

Someone aught to put tags on the new PCs saying "Sub-version of Vista,
limited license."

But it is, buyer beware.