On 22/06/2011 09:14, Sean Miller wrote:
On 22 June 2011 08:59, Avi Greenbury <li...@avi.co
<mailto:li...@avi.co>> wrote:
Jon Reynolds wrote:
1. Why on Earth did they choose to put Vista on there??
Perhaps because a new board supposedly means a new install of
Windows and you're not supposed to be using XP licenses any more.
Perhaps they're also tired of supporting an OS that's way past
end-of-life.
You sure about that?
I always believed that even an OEM licence was tied to "the machine",
but if you had to replace a motherboard you could still re-install
legally. The "automatic activation" facilities in XP might tell you
too many aspects of the machine has changed, but a call to Microsoft
can resolve that.
This is a blog post about what Microsoft class as the machine nowadays...
"4.1 We grant you a nonexclusive right to distribute an individual
software license only with a fully assembled computer system. A "fully
assembled computer system" means a computer system consisting of at
least a central processing unit, a motherboard, a hard drive, a power
supply, and a case."
You will notice the loophole that people have been exploiting (the
former language which stated that an OEM desktop Operating System
license could be sold with "non-peripheral hardware,") is no longer in
place. It is now very simple and straightforward: an OEM license must be
sold "only with a fully assembled computer system." Loophole closed.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssmallbiz/archive/2005/09/07/461950.aspx
Seems pretty strict, last I heard it was tied to the motherboard and case.
Anyway, I wouldn't be inclined to re-install because I changed a
motherboard anyway. I may have to install new graphics/sound drivers
etc. after changing the mobo (if they were using onboard) but I don't
see why a re-install would be necessary.
In the olden days Windows could be more fussy about hardware changes,
such as changing from one motherboard to another. I guess this still
can be the case if you're using the built in Windows disk drivers. I
found that for instance going from a Pentium 4 to a Pentium 2 didn't
work. A place I used to work at used to do images of Windows for
deployment, they found that creating the images on newer hardware
wouldn't work on older hardware, in the end we had to use the oldest
hardware we had such as a P2 and install what we wanted, and then run
Sysprep with the hardware drivers available for newer disk controller,
otherwise the machines wouldn't boot.
I gather in Vista and Windows 7 things have improved greatly and if the
machine can't boot you have the option of loading a gui recovery mode
and adding drivers that way.
Rob
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