Vista OEM & "Repair install"

- I've posted a similar question in the .general group without a sure answer
so I'm posting it here . -

I'm going to buy a new laptop that sports a Windows Vista Home Premium
edition I persoanlly dislike. Unfortunatelly there's no way to "customize"
the lappy's operating system
befor buying it. (Asus)

As a result, to keep costs low, I thought I could buy a separate Windows
Vista Ultimate generic-OEM disc + license, and reinstall from scratch.
Perfectly reasonable and legal. Technically acheivable.

Till here no problem, apart from the only big OEM constrain: license is
married for ever with the same PC.

That wouldn't be a great problem, I've never "moved" my XP license to
another computer.

Now my worry: what happens if you need to "freshen" your install? Will it
work with the OEM disk or not?

What I mean with "freshen"?

A little step back: in Windows XP it is possible to boot from CD and ask to
repair an installation; at that point, setup performs a "refresh" install,
that is it recognizes the previous install on the hard disk and restores
missing files and settings. I did this task many times on my PC.

I think it is a very important feature, 'cause this kind of operation saves
you from reinstalling from scratch again, loosing big amounts of time...

It would be crazy for MS to disallow "repair" installs in OEM installs....

Can someone help?

OEM version can do repair install...........It also has the "recovery
console"
It has everything a non OEM version has...........except the installation
needs a drive with no OS on it.
peter
"Marcus" <> wrote in message
news:...
>- I've posted a similar question in the .general group without a sure
>answer so I'm posting it here . -
>
> I'm going to buy a new laptop that sports a Windows Vista Home Premium
> edition I persoanlly dislike. Unfortunatelly there's no way to "customize"
> the lappy's operating system
> befor buying it. (Asus)
>
> As a result, to keep costs low, I thought I could buy a separate Windows
> Vista Ultimate generic-OEM disc + license, and reinstall from scratch.
> Perfectly reasonable and legal. Technically acheivable.
>
> Till here no problem, apart from the only big OEM constrain: license is
> married for ever with the same PC.
>
> That wouldn't be a great problem, I've never "moved" my XP license to
> another computer.
>
> Now my worry: what happens if you need to "freshen" your install? Will it
> work with the OEM disk or not?
>
> What I mean with "freshen"?
>
> A little step back: in Windows XP it is possible to boot from CD and ask
> to repair an installation; at that point, setup performs a "refresh"
> install, that is it recognizes the previous install on the hard disk and
> restores missing files and settings. I did this task many times on my PC.
>
> I think it is a very important feature, 'cause this kind of operation
> saves you from reinstalling from scratch again, loosing big amounts of
> time...
>
> It would be crazy for MS to disallow "repair" installs in OEM installs....
>
> Can someone help?
>